Tony Cianfaglione
2004-02-05 03:17:30 UTC
I've had success with repairing the directories on disks destroyed by
'click death' drives. I'd tried reformatting the disks on Win95 and 98
machines but the format utility (even long format with verify) gives up
too quickly and reports the disk is either locked or damaged. Scandisk
refuses to even look at the disks and reports there is something wrong
with them.
Using the Win3.1 guiutils.exe on an old 486, I was able to reformat the
disks and they now work fine on all the various machines I've tried them
on. This may work with internal drives too but I use my good external
parallel drive and click on the drive icon and select format from the
menu. When the disk starts to click, press eject and a message will
appear that the disk has a format and would you like to continue
formatting with verify.
Re-inject the disk, select continue and the format/verify will run for
9 minutes and 27 seconds, successfully repairing the disk every time I've
tried it this way (I've repaired 12 disks so far by this method including
a couple my friend was ready to throw out as he had tried just everything
even a Mac). Scandisk will even verify the disk is fine and I've had no
further problems with any of the disks repaired in this manner. Is it
possible the Win3.1 guiutils.exe is a better program than the later
versions?
Maybe this method shouldn't work either but it does. Give it a try
before heaving your disks. I constant use the repaired disks and have
never had a repeat failure with them.
'click death' drives. I'd tried reformatting the disks on Win95 and 98
machines but the format utility (even long format with verify) gives up
too quickly and reports the disk is either locked or damaged. Scandisk
refuses to even look at the disks and reports there is something wrong
with them.
Using the Win3.1 guiutils.exe on an old 486, I was able to reformat the
disks and they now work fine on all the various machines I've tried them
on. This may work with internal drives too but I use my good external
parallel drive and click on the drive icon and select format from the
menu. When the disk starts to click, press eject and a message will
appear that the disk has a format and would you like to continue
formatting with verify.
Re-inject the disk, select continue and the format/verify will run for
9 minutes and 27 seconds, successfully repairing the disk every time I've
tried it this way (I've repaired 12 disks so far by this method including
a couple my friend was ready to throw out as he had tried just everything
even a Mac). Scandisk will even verify the disk is fine and I've had no
further problems with any of the disks repaired in this manner. Is it
possible the Win3.1 guiutils.exe is a better program than the later
versions?
Maybe this method shouldn't work either but it does. Give it a try
before heaving your disks. I constant use the repaired disks and have
never had a repeat failure with them.