Linux Tools for rebuilding a FAT16 or FAT32 file system

[Steve Jenkin]

Jeremy [and the clug list]

Thanks for your replies and helpful comments.  Sorry for being quiet - I
posted the message before going away at Easter & am just back - but have
to go off again tomorrow for a couple of weeks.  I will repost with more
info when I am back in town more reliably...

I don't know exactly what happened to my nephews disk drive - I heard
some story of getting a virus from the Net whilst he was writing his
assingments.  I will pursue this a bit more.

He _did_ try Nortons' Tools to recover his disk - the 'recovery disk'
failed - I gather there was an error message, but don't know what.

He gave the drive to the support staff at Uni - they were unable to do
better than he, but I suspect they just ran Nortons' alone.

Thanks all for your help and persevering with me ;-)  Will get more
info.

cheers
sj

Jeremy wrote:
> 
> On 2002.03.29 11:30 Steve Jenkin wrote:
> > Hope this isn't too off-topic...
> >
> > Can anyone point me to tools that can work with & rebuild FAT16 and
> > FAT32 filesystems under Linux [any distro, I will install what I have
> > to]?
> >
> > My nephew had his hard disk 'zapped' last November, the last night
> > before his final assignments were due...  He was unable to recover the
> > disk with the Norton's recovery disk he had made.  The Uni staff were
> > unable as well.  Thought I might take a look :-)
> >
> > I suspect that whatever hit his disk changed the FAT table from FAT16
> > [Win95] to FAT32 [Win98].  I want to take a copy and play with this
> > idea.
> 
> Ummm.  If the FAT table was changed, you probably lost all the
> information therein.  Which means that the clusters on the disk now
> have no relation to each other, and your files are broken up into 4kb
> chunks.  However you may be lucky.  If the files aren't fragmented you
> might be able to do a 'strings /dev/hdxx' and start playing jigsaw
> puzzles.
> 
> >
> > Any suggestions or pointers will be most welcome.  Using 'dd' should
> > only be a last resort :-)
> >
> > cheers
> > sj
> >
> >
> > --
> > --------
> > Steve Jenkin, Unix Sys Admin
> > PO Box 48, Kippax, ACT 2615
> > 0412 786 915
> >
> >

-- 
--------
Steve Jenkin, Unix Sys Admin
PO Box 48, Kippax, ACT 2615
0412 786 915