Re: Block 2 hard drive damage

[gberigan@cse.unl.edu (Greg Berigan)]

Myles.Fudge@logicbbs.org wrote:

>My difficulty with an IBM OEM-31080 hard drive seem to have no end in sight.
>Last night the drive suffered damage to block 2 and will not boot.

I'd be interested in the answer to this question too, although my
problems are with 3.5" disks that had block 2 go bad.  Block 2 is the
first block of the main directory and is hard coded into ProDOS as such.
I believe it is the most accessed block on any ProDOS volume, and I've
found such damage on 3.5" disks to be unrepairable, even impossible to
reformat.

Because I've had so many disk failures of block 2, I now always store my
files in subdirectories so that when block 2 fails, I can copy the whole
disk to another disk and restore block 2 from another disk created in
the same way.

I've made several 3.5" disks into coasters because of this problem.
Even some pointers to some ProDOS disk recovery programs would be nice.

I suspect you have physical damage to the location on the disk
corresponding to block 2.  I recommend you find a company that does hard
drive repair and recovery and MAKE SURE they know what an Apple II is
and what ProDOS is; they might assume the disk is formatted Macintosh
and do more damage than recovery.  Impress upon them that it is not a
Macintosh formatted hard drive.  This barring other advice from the
newsgroup.

>(2) My son used the computer next 
>and after playing some new games on the OEM drive he closed all the folders 
>from the Finder and instead of properly shutting down, he just switched the 
>power off.  The next time I switched on the GS, it didn't get past the text
>screen that identifies my Apple IIgs as a Rom 3 machine.

The head was probably floating over block 2 when he shut off the power
without shutting down and eventually came into contact with the disk
surface.

>I want to recover the thousands of files I have on that drive big time!

Try making a disk copy of the entire disk at block level (rather than
file level) before trying to reformat it!  Try booting to ProDOS 8 from
a 3.5" disk, but not to GS/OS, and try using a ProDOS 8 application like
Copy II Plus to make a disk copy (not by file) of the partitions to
same-sized ZIP disks or a friend's 32 MB or large harddrive.

I still recommend you have the disk looked at by a professional.  They
can recover files from disks damaged by fire; a head crash should be a
simple recovery.  Is it still under warranty?  The manufacturer may
require a specific recovery team, perhaps even their own, to qualify for
replacement of the drive.

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