OS2 World.Com Forum

Subject  :  hpfs partition file recovery
Author  :  renato renatogui@gmx.net
Date  :  06 May, 2003 on 01:01
I have a system with 2 HDs and some different OS, mainly Windows98 and OS/2 (eCS 1.0) but also linux and beos, all of them bootable from OS/2 boot manager.

I don't know why but now I only can boot Windows98 because the others freeze during boot process.

I would like at least to recover my 5 years old PMMAIL post that is aparently untouched in a HPFS partition that do not hold OS/2 system.
>
>For some strange reason I canot boot OS/2 CD alone or with inicialization floppies. The booting stops when it loads IBMFLPPY.ADD. Sometimes with lhe floppy led on other times with it off.

I tried to boot a floppy based linux (tomsrtbt) but it freezes too.
The only think that works fine is the terrible Windows98.

I downloaded DFSee but did not change anything because I am affraid of messing up all (very hard to use this program securely).

Well, can you tell me a way I can save to my second HD my HPFS PMMAIL directory?
If I could do this, I would format the first problematic HD, install everything again and recover my precious messages.
I tried this with DFSee:

part 8 (first hd, second hpfs partition)
dirfind s \PMMAIL -l:*.*
recover L:\ *.*

The program seem to find all the files in the partition but I could not manage to transfer them to another place. I used for L above the LVM letter of my second hd hpfs partition; the LVM letter of a FAT16 partitions of the same hd and the DOS letter of one of the mounted partitions under DOS. I allways get the message 0 files recovered.

I suppose this is because DFSee seems to be in Read mode. I do not find in documentation how to change it to Write mode.

Anything I can do before to format my hd and lost my mail?

renato

PS: am I in the right forum?


Subject  :  Re:hpfs partition file recovery
Author  :  davidfor
Date  :  08 May, 2003 on 01:38
I've recently had a drive failed, and had to resort to DFSee to recover LOTS of data. Luckily, it worked. There isn't a "read only" mode in DFSee, so that's not it. The things I can think of are:

- the recover command might not be able to write to the root of a drive. You may need to specify a directory (e.g. L:\RecoveredPMMail).

- I suspect you have the "L:" wrong. This needs to be a drive letter that exists in the OS you have booted to run DFS in. Check this before starting DFSee.

- Also, I can't tell where you are running DFSee from. If you are trying to do this from a DOS prompt in Win98, I don't think it will work. You need to be in real DOS. It might be OK to boot Win98 to the command prompt (F8 then a menu option during the boot I think).

The best place to ask this would be http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dfsee-support.

Also, there is an HPFS driver for DOS that you could possibly use to get access to the data. I haven't used it, but, I assume it is on hobbes.


David

Subject  :  Re:hpfs partition file recovery
Author  :  renato renatogui@gmx.net
Date  :  12 May, 2003 on 16:14
Thanks Dave.

Your answer was very complete and gave me many usefull different paths to try.
I became downloading the HPFS driver for DOS from Hobbes that worked fine and I could recover the critical data I would not like to lost.
Then I deleted all the partitions im my main HD and found there is nothing wrong with it. I suppose there is a hardware fail with I/O section of the mainboard because the access to CDROM and floppy drive are freezing randomly with no HD at all. I will get another mainboard and themn i will restore everything.
Thanks a lot for your help again.

Renato


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