From - Fri Dec 12 09:21:57 1997
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From: jp1@aol.com (JP1)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: Fixing a disk
Date: 11 Dec 1997 08:37:20 GMT
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A couple of other things to try that stood me (and customers) in pretty good
stead in the "good old days" when I was in the business:

Try making a copy of the disk with ZZCopy or Photonix.  These two disk copy
utils proved quite qood at reading data from marginal blocks, thus yielding a
complete copy on a good disk.  (Suggest you format and verify the target blank
disk before you bother to use it.)

Also, if you have Copy II+, try using it in "Bitcopy" mode to make a copy of
the disk.  This is the most aggressive and tenacious copy routine I ever
encountered in the Apple II world, and it's slow as molasses, but if anythnig
can read data from marginal blocks, this is it.

It's been years since I've used Copy II+ for this, so I can't recite from
memory the menu interface for the "Bitcopy" mode, but it is _not_ the standard
disk copy mode in the util.  It's probably accessible from a menu down one in
the hierarchy.  The "standard" settings will probably work as well for you as
any custom ones (unless you're familiar with nybble-izing, sector interleave,
and other details)--just use the Enter key to accept the various default
settings.  

Making a "Bitcopy" of a disk with Copy II+ takes 5 minutes or more, but I have
had dozens of tech support callers who were frantic about "unreadable" disks
who breathed sighs of relief after their bacon was saved this way.  (I never
trusted Copy II+ for much else than this...but that's a personal preference.)

Also, someone recommended Deliverance (oh, what a great util that nearly
was...), and that's a pretty good choice.  It's more aggressive than ProSel
(and its willingness to muck around in badly trashed disks is why it'll crash
more often than ProSel will), but to "repair" bad blocks on a disk, it needs
some unused blocks on the disk.  If the bad disk is completely full,
Deliverance can't "repair" it.  By the way, if you try Deliv, keep in mind that
the number of times it's to try to read a bad block is a value the user can
set.  Once is usually not enough...but if it can't read a block in 5 tries, it
probably never can.

Another thing that Deliv can do quite well is copy files from a damaged disk. 
The file's blocks are read at a fairly primitive level, so it's slow...but it
can often get "important" files from a damaged disk that other utils can't.

John P.