🚀 go-pugleaf

In <Pine.SUN.3.91.960507144134.385D-100000@hawk.ind.tansu.com.au>, Charlie Brady <cbrady@ind.tansu.com.au> writes:
>
>A friend has accidentally reformatted his dearly beloved d: HPFS. Does 
>anyone out there know how to recover at least some of the files??

Charlie:

This is a hell of a long shot but it is a cheap one so is worth trying.

The HPFS format wrote a new directory to the middle of the partition and
changed the file system type.  It didn't scribble over much else.  This means
that the original FAT and root directory is probably intact.  You *may* be
able to recover some stuff with a DOS disk editor such as Norton DU.

For that to work you'll have to reconstruct the entry in the partition table.
The only thing you should have to change is the file system type.  It was
*probably* FAT-16 but it may have been FAT-12.  I cannot advise you
further on that score.

Make a backup of the partition table onto a floppy and then try fiddling the
partition table entry for the D: drive.  Reboot and do a dir d: to see if anything is
visible.  If so then you probably have severely damaged file system but some stuff
will be recoverable.  Do not run chkdsk.  As a first attempt, try copying selected
files to floppy disk.  Only worry about program source files and data files such as
correspondence etc.  Forget binaries.  They can always be reloaded from original
program diskettes or retrieved from backups.

If that approach doesn't work then you can still recover the files but it is MUCH
harder ...