Re: Need Serious HD Recovery Help PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HELP

[jp1@aol.com (JP1)]

mgruen@ambrosia.dfwmm.net writes:

>  I whiped out Deliverance and prayed.  After an hour and a half of 
>scanning the drive, just on the last block, blip, the program hung.  I 
>tried again this morning.  Again it hung on the last block.  Hmmmm, I 
>start inspecting this block and I find data that is not mine and never 
>was.

Unfortunately, you've come across a bug in Deliverance.  (Vitesse
"management" knew about it for a long time, but refused to take
appropriate action to have it fixed.)

I've sometimes been able to get around the problem by deleting the
"offending" block, and in this case, the block would seem not to be of a
whole lot of use to you.   Also, presuming that the block belongs to a
"tree" file, try editing the file's index block to remove the pointer to
the last block.  (If you need detailed directions on how to do something
like this, you should'nt do it.)

ProSel _sometimes_ can recover files from a volume this badly damaged, but
almost all of the time, if Deliverance chokes before it finishes (the bug
you experienced), ProSel will post a message that says (in effect) that
the task is too complicated to take on.  This showed the difference
between Chris Warner's "agressive" attitude toward designing a directory
repair util and Bredon's "I'm smarter than everyone" approach.  If Vitesse
had been able to work out a decent business arrangement with Chris Warner
to tweak Deliverance to its optimum, the bug would have been eradicated in
the process.

Good luck.

John P.