[Coco] Recovering Data from Bad Disks

[Jayeson Lee-Steere]

Luis, thank you for your efforts. I was not able to get the BACKUP.BIN you
sent working, maybe because I was running HDB-DOS at the time. However I am
fairly certain I have my problem solved.

For others that have the same issue as I: On the disk containing Defeater,
there was another utility BACKUP512K. It does what the name suggests, dumps
sectors on the screen as read and prints out error information as they
occur. The on screen display makes it easy to visualize what is wrong with
the disks. I have a number of disks I thought were probably a lost cause,
for example RS-DOS was not able to read off a single file from any of the 6
disks with my programming work on them. These in fact have worst case about
20 bad bytes on the whole disk. Usually it is just one byte in a sector
(probably just 1 bit actually), one time there were several bytes that read
inconsistently.

For someone in my situation (including having a 512K Coco and only 1
drive), this software is the bomb. Carl England, if you are reading, thank
you very much. The only slight inconvenience is that it requires using an
intermediate (good) floppy, which I do not have, but another very kind
member is sending me some.

Thanks to all for the help and suggestions.

- Jayeson Lee-Steere

On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 11:54 PM, Luis Fernández <luis46coco at hotmail.com>wrote:

> If it helps I have this BACKUP, no errors report
> and so can pass the defective discs new ones
>
>
>
>
> > Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2013 00:12:34 +0800
> > From: cocolistemail at titaniumstudios.com
> > To: coco at maltedmedia.com
> > Subject: Re: [Coco] Recovering Data from Bad Disks
> >
> > Luis,
> >
> > That looks interesting. I don't think my PC has a floppy controller in
> it,
> > but I will look into it if all else fails. I suspect that the situation
> is
> > so grim that I will need to take partial sectors where I can get them.
> >
> > - Jayeson
> >
> > On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 11:15 PM, Luis Fernández <luis46coco at hotmail.com
> >wrote:
> >
> > > Hi
> > > In : http://www.nitros9.org/howto.html There is a utility called
> > > cocodisk, reading bad sectors and marks them with & HEB
> > > If you read the original and the support I could easily place the good
> of
> > > the two sectors together
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > Making  CoCoDskUtilPack V 1.1.3A.zip, Scan magazines and organize
> > > maltedmedia
> > > http://cococoding.com/cocodskutil/ Thank Aaron Wolfe
> > > http://www.tandycoco.com Thank Brian Blake and Stephen Fischer
> > > My personal blog: http://www.luis45ccs.blogspot.com,
> > > Excuse my English, I use google translator, my language is Spanish, I'm
> > > Spanish but I live in Venezuela
> > >
> > >
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > >
> > > > Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2013 15:21:47 +0800
> > > > From: cocolistemail at titaniumstudios.com
> > > > To: coco at maltedmedia.com
> > > > Subject: [Coco] Recovering Data from Bad Disks
> > > >
> > > > I have a lot of old Coco disks and now that I have my Coco set up,
> I'm in
> > > > the process of extracting the data off them. I am running Drivewire
> 4 in
> > > > HBDOS mode and BACKUP 0 TO n creates a .DSK per physical disk which
> is
> > > > exactly what I want.
> > > >
> > > > However, many of them are bad, including everything that has any of
> my
> > > work
> > > > on them. I do however have a backup disk for everything, but those
> two
> > > have
> > > > a lot of bad disks too. I was thinking that if I extracted what I
> could
> > > > from both versions and hex-diff the .dsk images, I should be able to
> > > > recover a lot. I vaguely recall back in the day that there was
> software
> > > > that would allow ignoring (checksum?) errors during copy and often
> you'd
> > > > end up with only one bad byte. I have no idea what that was though.
> Does
> > > > anyone know what I'm talking about?
> > > >
> > > > Another option would be to write something myself that uses DSKCON
> as it
> > > > would allow me to log out additional info such as which sectors were
> > > bad. I
> > > > have a vague recollection though that the DSKCON routines don't give
> any
> > > of
> > > > the sector data on error?
> > > >
> > > > - Jayeson Lee-Steere
> > > >
> > > > --
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> > > > Coco at maltedmedia.com
> > > > http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
> > >
> > >
> > > --
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> > >
> >
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