Tried DD 5.0 to resurrect a 1.2G HD that gave us the dreaded icon with question mark at start-up. Got it to recognize the HD, but during analyze got the message "Catastrophic Failure" and quit running. After that the drive was recognized, folders were visible, but there was no data in any folder including the system folder. Needless to say when I ran Unerase, nothing happened due to no data. Anyone else experience this or hear of this problem? I've searched the web and can't find any reference to this problem. Thanks.

The 'dreaded icon with question mark at start-up' isn't generally a prime candidate for disk doctors use. It merely means that a valid system could not be found on that volume for some reason. And unless Norton filesaver had been running consistently beforehand, you would not be able to 'unerase' anything. You don't tell us how you got a system runnning, and from what drive, and from what drive were you running Norton when you were diagnosing the 1.2 gig. I have been using Norton for a number of years and to be honest, I think that your 1.2 gig drive (probably old, and well used, yes?) had just run out of life and gave up the ghost. It happens, and had you been BACKING UP you data you wouldn't have to be mucking around with Norton in the first place. In summary: I don't think Norton was at fault by the indications you have supplied, and from the experience I have had.

fieraci, Thanks for your response. I do volunteer work for one of the local orgnizations who actually has the Mac5400/180 and am submitting the info on this forum on their behalf. Since I don't use the machine and didn't actually participate in the attempted rescue, I'm not absolutely sure of the precise steps taken. I've been told that the Norton Utilities CD was inserted in the CD drive and the system was running from there. At that point Norton would recognize the HD and an attempt to rescue the HD was made. Backing up the data is not the issue here; we're simply trying to understand what may have happened when Norton was reviewing the directory of the HD for rescue and how the pointers for folders could be restructured but the data contained in them would be gone/erased. Hopefully this additional info might help. Thanks.

Hard drives lead a hard life. Heat, vibration, electrical power fluctuation, spinning up/spinning down, fragmentation, etc, etc. And as I said: Norton can't resurrect ANY DATA unless the Norton Filesaver software had been running at all times on that system for quite a while before the drive allegedly failed. Norton has an UNERASE feature that, when run for the second time, can be set to unerase via directory contents and not 'filesaver' contents. This is basically your only hope, but you need another drive available to write the unerased data to. Sometimes it's just their time, and they fail. Sometimes they can be resurrected to a small extent, and usually are unreliable and what we call 'funky'. You may find a lot of things missing or displaced without any rhyme or reason. It's not worth delving into. My suggestion is to let the drive sit in a landfill for several years. This aging process has been known to 'refurbish' the drive platters and heads. Then they work good as new. The first step in this process is to remove the drive, walk to the nearest trash can, and drop it in. The sooner you get started, the sooner mother nature can get to work on that drive!

f--- you.

USE DISKWARRIOR!@!!! I have found by experiance that you should not install Nortons! it is ok to run off of the CD but if you wanna resurect a hardrive disk warrior works wonders!