Emergency 386 hard drive transfer question

[Lenny]

This post is partly a message which I posted the other day, however
now the problem has gotten more serious.
I'm running a 386/25 with Dos 6.2 for billing. The unit has two
Seagate MFM 40Meg drives that are doublespaced. It uses Qemm as a
manager, and the high memory area is being used. I use "Optimize" to
configure the memory. Scandisk found a problem on the E drive that it
can't fix and I hesitate to use Norton as this could make things
worse. Recently it has been having problems with bad sectors on the
drive showing, and refusing to boot unless you boot off a floppy and
do a sys c: from the A drive. Of course if you boot off the floppy and
then try to access programs they will either not run properly or there
isn't enough memory to operate them possibly due to doublespace not
loading? Anyway, now it will only boot if I'm lucky. Luckily I copied
my customer files on two floppies last time I got it to boot. But
there is alot of other stuff I would like to get off it. We are going
to try to get it to boot one more time and if it does I should assume
that it may be the last time. So if we're sucessful, I would like to
be ready to transfer everything on it to another drive. Is it possible
to do some kind of a transfer perhaps through the parallel port to a
Windows 2000 machine. We also have an old hard card which in theory
could be installed and it would boot my machine, but this other stuff
that presently has to load to make my machine come up and run properly
has me perplexed. If I can get in with my hard card is my data
accessible without doublespace being invoked? Of course
I would rather just get it to boot normally one more time and then do
some kind of a complete transfer. If anyone has any suggestions about
this I would be extemely grateful. Whew, I miss carbon paper. It never
crashed... Thanks, Lenny Stein, Barlen Electronics.

 

[Dbowey]

Lenny posted:

(BIG snip)

I'm not familiar with the term "doublespaced" drives. Is that like a two-HD
RAID set to mirror so that each drive stores identical info?

I recently did battle with a Windows system that used mirroring. One HD was
corrupting data. I broke the RAID, disconnected the bad one and booted from a
CD to read the data from the good drive (it wasn't bootable).

If that is what's going on with yours, you should be able to do essentially the
same in DOS. You can probably pick up a usable, 40Meg drive for nearly $free,
and do a disc copy to mirror the good drive.

Good luck

Don

 

[George Jetson]

Lenny posted:

(BIG snip)

I'm not familiar with the term "doublespaced" drives. Is that like a
two-HD
RAID set to mirror so that each drive stores identical info?

I recently did battle with a Windows system that used mirroring. One HD
was
corrupting data. I broke the RAID, disconnected the bad one and booted
from a
CD to read the data from the good drive (it wasn't bootable).

If that is what's going on with yours, you should be able to do
essentially the
same in DOS. You can probably pick up a usable, 40Meg drive for nearly
$free,
and do a disc copy to mirror the good drive.

Good luck

Don

The drivers dblspace.sys and dblspace.bin are located on the c: root and
allow access to a compresssed HIDDEN file that is essentially a big random
access zip file. Any attemp to copy individual files will need to boot up
with these drivers and dos 6.2x as the compression was proprietary. You
will most likely not get the compressed files intact so I would try to boot
with a floppy with correct drivers and copy to temporary harddrive.

All disk compression/encryption/multipartition technologies add a dangerous
level of complexity with respect to data recovery. I avoid all these
innovations to this day, fool me once...

 

[Chuck Harris]

"doublespaced" drives are drives that use a software compression
scheme to increase (on average) the amount of data that can be stored.

-Chuck

 

[Sam Goldwasser]

The drivers dblspace.sys and dblspace.bin are located on the c: root and
allow access to a compresssed HIDDEN file that is essentially a big random
access zip file. Any attemp to copy individual files will need to boot up
with these drivers and dos 6.2x as the compression was proprietary. You
will most likely not get the compressed files intact so I would try to boot
with a floppy with correct drivers and copy to temporary harddrive.

All disk compression/encryption/multipartition technologies add a dangerous
level of complexity with respect to data recovery. I avoid all these
innovations to this day, fool me once...

Another option IF you can get it to boot is to transfer via LapLink over
the parallel port. LapLink is a protocol and cable that allows for
reliable transfers of individual files as well as entire directories.

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Important: Anything sent to the email address in the message header is ignored.
To contact me, please use the feedback form on the S.E.R FAQ Web sites.

 

[Henry Markov]

It's been a while since I've dealt with DOS but here's my idea. I would guess
that you can't run your programs properly when booting from floppy because you
need both the DblSpace drivers to access your HD files and you need a LoadHigh
type capability to put some of your drivers and other DOS components into the
640-1000K region in order to free enough of the base 640K for your
applications. You should be able to configure a config.sys and autoexec.bat on
your floppy boot disk to accomplish both. Of course you will also need to have
the Dbl drivers and QEMM components on your boot floppy. If you configure the
floppy properly there is no reason that you cannot create the same run time
environment that enables your programs to run when you boot from a HD.

For an entirely different approach take a look at BartPE and/or Knoppix which
you can find easily by googling. These are Windows XP and Linux systems
respectively that boot entirely from a CD. Assuming you either have or are
willing and able to install a CD drive and network card in your machine you
should be able to boot these systems and then you would have a networked
computer from which you could transmit your files. If your 386/25 only has ISA
slots and you have no compatible network card, I have some old 3COM cards that
would work. If you wish to communicate by mail, reverse all the letters in the
user name part of my email address.

Roger

 

[Henry Markov]

A few things occurred to me immediately after posting. You may not have enough
memory to run XP (although BartPE is a reduced XP) and XP may not run on a 386.
It's possible that you would have neither restriction with Knoppix (Linux).

 

[Tom MacIntyre]

This post is partly a message which I posted the other day, however
now the problem has gotten more serious.
I'm running a 386/25 with Dos 6.2 for billing. The unit has two
Seagate MFM 40Meg drives that are doublespaced. It uses Qemm as a
manager, and the high memory area is being used. I use "Optimize" to
configure the memory. Scandisk found a problem on the E drive that it
can't fix and I hesitate to use Norton as this could make things
worse. Recently it has been having problems with bad sectors on the
drive showing, and refusing to boot unless you boot off a floppy and
do a sys c: from the A drive. Of course if you boot off the floppy and
then try to access programs they will either not run properly or there
isn't enough memory to operate them possibly due to doublespace not
loading? Anyway, now it will only boot if I'm lucky. Luckily I copied
my customer files on two floppies last time I got it to boot. But
there is alot of other stuff I would like to get off it. We are going
to try to get it to boot one more time and if it does I should assume
that it may be the last time. So if we're sucessful, I would like to
be ready to transfer everything on it to another drive. Is it possible
to do some kind of a transfer perhaps through the parallel port to a
Windows 2000 machine. We also have an old hard card which in theory
could be installed and it would boot my machine, but this other stuff
that presently has to load to make my machine come up and run properly
has me perplexed. If I can get in with my hard card is my data
accessible without doublespace being invoked? Of course
I would rather just get it to boot normally one more time and then do
some kind of a complete transfer. If anyone has any suggestions about
this I would be extemely grateful. Whew, I miss carbon paper. It never
crashed... Thanks, Lenny Stein, Barlen Electronics.

Man, this is nostalgic! I had an identical, or next to it, setup a few
years back.

Doublespace had its share of difficulties, although Drivespace was
scarier.

Can you boot from another Doublespaced HDD, and transfer the data?
Just because a drive won't boot doesn't mean you can't retrieve data.
The bad sectors may be somewhat confined to the boot sector area.

I have never tried it myself, but I have heard that sometimes you can
put a drive in a zip bag with as much air as possible removed, put it
in the freezer overnight, and then you may have a shot at getting more
data from it.

Good luck.

Tom

 

[Tom MacIntyre]

A few things occurred to me immediately after posting. You may not have enough
memory to run XP (although BartPE is a reduced XP) and XP may not run on a 386.
It's possible that you would have neither restriction with Knoppix (Linux).

You're lucky to run 95 on a 386, especially an SX.

Tom

 

[NSM]

| This post is partly a message which I posted the other day, however
| now the problem has gotten more serious.
....
| be ready to transfer everything on it to another drive. Is it possible
| to do some kind of a transfer perhaps through the parallel port to a
| Windows 2000 machine....

Maybe LapLink?

N

 

[Gerard Bok]

A few things occurred to me immediately after posting. You may not have enough
memory to run XP (although BartPE is a reduced XP) and XP may not run on a 386.
It's possible that you would have neither restriction with Knoppix (Linux).

But I'm affraid this would still render him unable to read the
compressed files

 

[Jim Adney]

I'm running a 386/25 with Dos 6.2 for billing. The unit has two
Seagate MFM 40Meg drives that are doublespaced. It uses Qemm as a
manager, and the high memory area is being used. I use "Optimize" to
configure the memory. Scandisk found a problem on the E drive that it
can't fix and I hesitate to use Norton as this could make things
worse. Recently it has been having problems with bad sectors on the
drive showing, and refusing to boot unless you boot off a floppy and
do a sys c: from the A drive. Of course if you boot off the floppy and
then try to access programs they will either not run properly or there
isn't enough memory to operate them possibly due to doublespace not
loading? Anyway, now it will only boot if I'm lucky.

I see two possible solutions. Both require that you get a second hard
drive and install it on this computer as a secondary drive. Since your
40MB hard drive is an MFM, you will probably want to get a drive card
which will support IDE hard drives. Attach a 100MB or more IDE drive
to that card. You said you were having trouble with the E: partition,
so I gather that there are multiple partitions on your MFM drive.

1) Install the second hard drive, including getting it configured in
the BIOS. Boot to a floppy and fdisk partitions on that drive, as many
as you have on the first drive, with each partition at least twice the
size of the corresponding partion on the first drive. Format all the
partitions on the second drive and then sys the first one and set it
active.

Then try to boot to your original disk. Keep trying until it works.
Once you're in, use xcopy (you'll have to check the options) to copy
each entire partition to its corresponding partition on the second
disk.

2) If you can find anyone with Partition Magic (any version), borrow
the floppies and boot to them. Use Partition Magic to copy the each
partion on the first disk to the second disk. This may take several
tries, because PM will complain if it finds problems with the
partitions.

Once the partitions are copied, use PM to set the first partition on
the second disk active and then shut down and remove the first disk.

both methods:

Record and then remove the references in the BIOS to the first disk.
After this you should be able to either boot to the second disk, or
move this disk to a newer machine and boot to it there.

This should work, but only if you can get this drive to work
temporarily. If you're not familiar with this stuff, however, it will
seem overwhelming and you might want to get some help.

-

 

[CJT]

| This post is partly a message which I posted the other day, however
| now the problem has gotten more serious.
...
| be ready to transfer everything on it to another drive. Is it possible
| to do some kind of a transfer perhaps through the parallel port to a
| Windows 2000 machine....

Maybe LapLink?

N

I think that's probably got the best chance of working, because it
doesn't involve installing new hardware (other than a simple cable)
or other radical surgery that could waste what may be his one last
chance to boot.

 

[James Sweet]

This post is partly a message which I posted the other day, however
now the problem has gotten more serious.
I'm running a 386/25 with Dos 6.2 for billing. The unit has two
Seagate MFM 40Meg drives that are doublespaced. It uses Qemm as a
manager, and the high memory area is being used. I use "Optimize" to
configure the memory. Scandisk found a problem on the E drive that it
can't fix and I hesitate to use Norton as this could make things
worse. Recently it has been having problems with bad sectors on the
drive showing, and refusing to boot unless you boot off a floppy and
do a sys c: from the A drive. Of course if you boot off the floppy and
then try to access programs they will either not run properly or there
isn't enough memory to operate them possibly due to doublespace not
loading? Anyway, now it will only boot if I'm lucky. Luckily I copied
my customer files on two floppies last time I got it to boot. But
there is alot of other stuff I would like to get off it. We are going
to try to get it to boot one more time and if it does I should assume
that it may be the last time. So if we're sucessful, I would like to
be ready to transfer everything on it to another drive. Is it possible
to do some kind of a transfer perhaps through the parallel port to a
Windows 2000 machine. We also have an old hard card which in theory
could be installed and it would boot my machine, but this other stuff
that presently has to load to make my machine come up and run properly
has me perplexed. If I can get in with my hard card is my data
accessible without doublespace being invoked? Of course
I would rather just get it to boot normally one more time and then do
some kind of a complete transfer. If anyone has any suggestions about
this I would be extemely grateful. Whew, I miss carbon paper. It never
crashed... Thanks, Lenny Stein, Barlen Electronics.

Oh jeez, that's quite an antique, been a while since I've really dug into an
old DOS machine. DOS 6.2 should come with InterLink which was used to map
drives over a Laplink parallel or null modem serial cable. If I recall, you
simply type "intersvr" on the host machine (the one with your data on it)
and then for the client you'll need another DOS PC, but this could be a
modern box running DOS. Put interlnk.sys in the config.sys and reboot, it
should connect and let you access the drives on the host from the client.
Here I found a page on it
http://users.cybercity.dk/~bse26236/batutil/help/INTERL_S.HTM hopefully this
works, I had good luck with it but this was years ago.

For replacing the PC I suggest looking for a Pentium box with a standard IDE
hard drive, I picked up a Dell a couple years ago to use as a router, only
cost me $10 and it worked flawlessly. Small (by today's standards, but HUGE
for your purposes) drives such as 1-4 GB are dirt cheap so install at least
two of them and backup your data regularly in case one fails.

 

[James Sweet]

A few things occurred to me immediately after posting. You may not have enough
memory to run XP (although BartPE is a reduced XP) and XP may not run on a 386.
It's possible that you would have neither restriction with Knoppix (Linux).

XP won't run on a 386, nor is it likely to work on a 486. Even on a 133-233
MHx Pentium it'll be painfully slow and unuseable with any less than 128MB.

 

[Van Gardner]

I think Sam's Laplink suggestion is the easiest and most reliable
solution to your problem if you can get your system up one more time.
I ran a modified IBM AT with a 115mb ESDI drive using "doublespace"
giving 230mb. This was always connected to my IBM PS/2 Mod 80 with a
laplink parallel cable. I used the AT just for backup file space to
store games & data. I ran this system for many years and never had
any trouble transfering files back and fourth even though the Mod 80
was not using "doublespace". The Mod 80 ran Win 3.1 and the AT had
DOS 5.0 with LapLink III on both.

Van Gardner

 

[Marlboro]

This post is partly a message which I posted the other day, however
now the problem has gotten more serious.
I'm running a 386/25 with Dos 6.2 for billing. The unit has two
Seagate MFM 40Meg drives that are doublespaced. It uses Qemm as a
manager, and the high memory area is being used. I use "Optimize" to
configure the memory. Scandisk found a problem on the E drive that it
can't fix and I hesitate to use Norton as this could make things
worse. Recently it has been having problems with bad sectors on the
drive showing, and refusing to boot unless you boot off a floppy and
do a sys c: from the A drive. Of course if you boot off the floppy and
then try to access programs they will either not run properly or there
isn't enough memory to operate them possibly due to doublespace not
loading? Anyway, now it will only boot if I'm lucky. Luckily I copied
my customer files on two floppies last time I got it to boot. But
there is alot of other stuff I would like to get off it. We are going
to try to get it to boot one more time and if it does I should assume
that it may be the last time. So if we're sucessful, I would like to
be ready to transfer everything on it to another drive. Is it possible
to do some kind of a transfer perhaps through the parallel port to a
Windows 2000 machine. We also have an old hard card which in theory
could be installed and it would boot my machine, but this other stuff
that presently has to load to make my machine come up and run properly
has me perplexed. If I can get in with my hard card is my data
accessible without doublespace being invoked? Of course
I would rather just get it to boot normally one more time and then do
some kind of a complete transfer. If anyone has any suggestions about
this I would be extemely grateful. Whew, I miss carbon paper. It never
crashed... Thanks, Lenny Stein, Barlen Electronics.

ahhh, years ago I had similar problem with my 386, I bough a new
maxtor HD which includes a flopy ultilities, dont recall its name ,
you will need to install the new HD and the old HD (1 as master 1 as
slave) on the machine and bootup with the flopy. The program will
allow you to install/partition/...ect. and do a what it calls "disk
image copy" or something similar... it copys everything from the
source disk to the new HD...Thats all i can remember,

 

[Gerard Bok]

ahhh, years ago I had similar problem with my 386, I bough a new
maxtor HD which includes a flopy ultilities, dont recall its name ,

Probably Maxblast

 

[Franc Zabkar]

ahhh, years ago I had similar problem with my 386, I bough a new
maxtor HD which includes a flopy ultilities, dont recall its name ,

Before MaxBlast there was EZ-Drive, or something like that.

you will need to install the new HD and the old HD (1 as master 1 as
slave)

The old HD has an MFM interface (two cables, one for control, the
other for data). The new HD is ATA/IDE. This makes them incompatible.


- Franc Zabkar

 

[Andre]

I remember there was a tool called laplink, which could transfer data
between 2 dos PCs using a serial null-modem-cable.
Maybe you can get a second PC to do this?