Re: Ressurecting Old Apple ][ disks

[musjndx@gsusgi2.gsu.edu (Jonathan N. Deitch)]

ah499@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (John Daniels) writes:

>I wouldn't give up the bits as totally gone until you try this with Copy II + 
> - use the Verify Disk function to find out where your bad sectors are.  If you
>want you could do this several times to see if it misreads the same sectors 
>every time.  If not it might also be a drive speed or alignment problem rather
>than loss of magnetic flux.  Anyway - take note of which are the bad sectors.
>Go to the Bitcopy 5.25 option of Copy II + and choose the Sector Editor.  Try
>to read one of the bad sectors that the Verify function pointed out.  If it reads it then write it back to disk in the same spot it was.  If it doesn't read it
>then try again.  And again.  I've found that sometimes the bad reads on
>weak disks will be intermittant and once in a while you can get lucky and get
>a good read out of it.  If you do just write that sector back to disk again
>right away.

I've used this on several occasions with the following difference --

NEVER write to the original, bad, disk.  Make a sector copy of the disk
including bad sectors.  When you get a good read on a bad sector, remove the
bad disk, insert the good disk, and write the sector to the good disk.  Repeat
as needed on different drives (some drives are more sensitive) until you have
recovered all the data.

- Jonathan
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