HDD death

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(May be more suited to the Software or W98 forums, but I’ll try here first)

I need to recover as much data as possible from a dying hard drive. The system it comes from is W98SE which has lost/corrupted its VMM32.vxd. Before attempting to repair the VXD problem, I looked to recovering as much data as possible so I’ve slaved it in to another machine. It is recognised and I can read the directories/files.

It’s an age-old problem and one I’m sure there’s an instant answer to, but how can I get the copy process to ignore files that can’t be read from the slave disk but continue the copying? I want it to attempt ALL files in a given folder, not just stop at the first read failure. I’ve tried CHKDSK /f but I just get line after line of cross-links and the like – a sure sign that something is amiss.

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Does the DOS Copy command choke as well?

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I’ll give that a try tonight. Isn’t it likely that I’ll get ‘Abort, Retry, Fail’ message at the first faulty file and be stuck in the same situation?

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It’s possible, but you may be able to get away with propping a book against the “F” (or A?) key on your keyboard…..

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It’s possible, but you may be able to get away with propping a book against the “F” (or A?) key on your keyboard…..

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I’ll give that a try tonight. Isn’t it likely that I’ll get ‘Abort, Retry, Fail’ message at the first faulty file and be stuck in the same situation?

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Does the DOS Copy command choke as well?

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Try the DOS xcopy command. It’s not that it won’t choke at files it can’t read, but that it has arguments allowing it to be restarted without trying to recopy those it’s already copied. I used it years ago for backup to floppy. Don’t remember all the details now, but it was something like using attrib first to set the archive bit on all files, then use xcopy to copy all files that have the archive bit set, resetting the bit as each file is copied.

Both attrib & xcopy can recurse into subdirectories so (assuming nothing stops them) you can use each command once to copy an entire drive. If something does stop xcopy you can fix the problem then restart it & it will resume where it left off.

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Try the DOS xcopy command. It’s not that it won’t choke at files it can’t read, but that it has arguments allowing it to be restarted without trying to recopy those it’s already copied. I used it years ago for backup to floppy. Don’t remember all the details now, but it was something like using attrib first to set the archive bit on all files, then use xcopy to copy all files that have the archive bit set, resetting the bit as each file is copied.

Both attrib & xcopy can recurse into subdirectories so (assuming nothing stops them) you can use each command once to copy an entire drive. If something does stop xcopy you can fix the problem then restart it & it will resume where it left off.

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Fish, try Unstoppable Copier. I think it’s exactly what you need.

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Big thumbs up to you Mark.

What a splendid utility! Small, efficient and free. I’ve just given it a quick test here in the office and it does look like it will do the job.

A donation will be winging it’s way to the author as soon as I can.

Another utility I tried last night is Odi’s LFN Tools which preserves long file names when copying in DOS. Worked a treat.

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Big thumbs up to you Mark.

What a splendid utility! Small, efficient and free. I’ve just given it a quick test here in the office and it does look like it will do the job.

A donation will be winging it’s way to the author as soon as I can.

Another utility I tried last night is Odi’s LFN Tools which preserves long file names when copying in DOS. Worked a treat.

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Fish, try Unstoppable Copier. I think it’s exactly what you need.

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