🚀 go-pugleaf

bgerseko@powerup.com.au (Brett Gersekowski) wrote:
>~ AnTY ~ (s9507584@yallara.cs.rmit.edu.au) wrote:
>: 	Well i've recently install linux on my p.c, trying to config and set
>: things up...everything was going as planned...but ARGH!!!! i accidently copied
>: the lodlin.zip for dos file to /dev/hda1 (thinking it would be the way
>
>Let's see... You typed
>
>cp lodlin.zip /dev/hda1
>

 [ snip ] 

>If you know - or are willing to learn real fast - a little about 
>filesystems, there is a possibility. It kinda requires that there still 
>exists an uncorrupted version of the FAT and root directory, though.
>Don't think for a second, though, that I know what I'm talking about. I'm 
>no expert - just a bit of a tinkerer, I guess - but I get away with it, 
>usually.
>

 [ snip ]

What you _could_ try is norton utilities.  Assuming both copies of the FAT
are gone, when you restore DOS partition and 'sys' it you'll have it empty.
Norton's 'unerase' may then pick up whatever you had there, as the data's
still there (unless you format the partition).  When you delete a file or
directory DOS removes the first character of its name and clears FAT 
entries for it.  If your FAT's overwritten with loadlin.zip you _could_
use something like norton disk editor to set its entries to '\0' and have
clear FAT.  The only problem for 'unerase' would then be that first 
characters of your filenames are not set to '\0'.  It may work, though.
OTOH, if a copy of FAT's survived norton disk doctor should be able to
fix everything automagically.  Finally, you could use disk editor to 
manually restore your disk (FAT, actually), I'm quite sure diskedit can
do it.  How long it will take is another question.

I once run 'mkswap' on /dev/hda1 by mistake, and fixed the partition by 
running 'fdisk' from dos boot floppy.  In my case FATs and system files 
weren't stuffed, so everything was there on the disk after I rebooted. 

Hope that helps
-- 
Dimitri
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Imagine an opaque closed box containing a cat and a vial of poisonous gas.  
At any given moment the cat may break the vial and die of poisining.  Since
we cannot tell, without opening the box, whether the cat is dead or alive 
at a given moment, we access the cat's state in terms of probabilities; say,
50/50.  Let me rephrase that: at any given moment the cat is both dead and
alive.  Such cat is called the Shroedinger's cat.