Re: Focus Drive //e woes

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

William Katz wrote:
> Jerry <SNIPawanderin@yahosnipo.ca> wrote:
>
> > Michael J. Mahon wrote:
> >
> >
> > > William Katz wrote:
> > >
> > > > So I decided to turn on my Apple //e computer two days ago, after having
> > > > it sit on my desk for about ~2 years.
> > > > Everything seems to work except one part... my Focus Drive //e!! :(
> > > >
> > > > I turn on the //e, and for the first one or two seconds, it sounds like
> > > > the Focus Drive will boot up (I can hear the hard drive whirring), but
> > > > then the computer just sits there with the 'Apple //e' title on the
> > > > screen.
> >
> > [...]
> >
> >
> > > > I have also *not* tried to put the hard
> > > > drive in an ibm computer and see if any disk checking utilities would fix
> > > > it?
> > >
> > > That wouldn't help, since PC utilities only "fix" disks with PC
> > > formatting.  It would be a way to do a low-level format, but that
> > > is almost certainly not the problem.
> >
> > If you buy the SpinRite program from Steve Gibson (http://grc.com/), it can
> > fix a somewhat damaged hard drive.  It runs on a PC, but does not care what
> > the high-level filesystem information is, as it talks to the drive
> > controller and does its work that way.  I have used this software to repair
> > drives that seemed completely gone and was delighted to have the data back.
> >
> > Jerry
>
>
> Thanks guys for your replies.  I tried re-seating the card in slot 7, as 
> well as re-seating the hard drive itself on the Focus Card.
> I also tried getting Prosel to fix it.
>
> So far nothing worked yet.
>
> I plan on trying SpinRite 6.0 on the hard drive, but I have to get a 2 
> 1/2" to 3 1/2" ide hard drive converter in order to connect it to one of 
> my desktop computers.  It seems like ebay has hundreds of them I can get.
>
> Also, does anyone know if Alltech (Computer Circulation Center) still 
> sells these?  I actually bought the Focus Drive //e from them back in July 
> of 2001.  Maybe I can call them for support?
>
> Anyway, if SpinRite does not fix the drive, I might 'fdisk' it to blank 
> out any partition information on it.  If I fdisk the drive, and put it 
> back in my //e, will I be able to format it okay??

I'd first try re-writing the partition table that the Focus uses.
It's one block that, if clobbered, prevents any partition from
mounting--and it can be fixed.

If you do succeed in attaching it to a PC, it would be interesting
to open it as a device with CiderPress, which accomodates a variety
of partition table formats.  Perhaps it would allow an easy capture
of the device's contents.

> If I remember, I think ProDOS 8 supports up to 32MB per 'partition' and I 
> had 5 or 6 partitions on the drive (s7,d1 s7,d2 s1,d1 s1,d2 s4,d1 and 
> s4,d2 I think were the partitions)
> I assume ShrinkIt, or Filer, or any of the ProDOS utility programs will be 
> able to format it just fine?

Once it is partitioned, any ProDOS formatting program will do the job,
but consider for a moment--what, short of a catastrophe, could have
destroyed more than a few blocks on this drive?  Odds are, all your
data is recoverable.

-michael

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