File Recovery

[Bay]

Assuming I had the badtrans b virus, I copied my address book to a floppy, sent it to the recycle bin and later selected to restore it to it's original location. The file is not in it's original location and as fate might have it, the floppy is unreadable and the message says the disk needs formatting. I did see the file copied to the disk, and even opened it on the floppy to see that it was there. I now am unable to read the file or open the floppy, and cannot find my address book. I use outlook express and it is a wab file. Can I recover it from the floppy somehow?
Please help if possible.
Bay

 

[Davey7549]

Bay
Before doing anything with the floppy that you are sure you downloaded the WAB file too, Take another floppy and try formatting it and try saving files on it. After saving open and read and try a copy back to hard drive. If all the above work then take your floppy you have the WAB file on to another PC and see if it can be read by that PC. If the floppy cannot be read by another PC and your PC "A" drive functions fine then there are utilities that will attempt to fix/recover the data from the floppy. Here is one I use.

Symantec’s Norton Utilities http://www.symantec.com includes Norton Disk Doctor and Norton UnErase utilities for recovering lost and deleted files. You can download a fully functional 30-day trial version of the suite from Symantec’s Web site It can be purchased from various stores ranging in price from 29.95 to 49.95 US. Your computer needs to be running Win95/98 or Windows Me to use Disk Doctor and UnErase not sure if Norton utilities supports WinXP yet. After you install the program, click the Start menu, Programs, Norton Utilities, and Norton Utilities Integrator to access the programs.

Disk Doctor checks for and repairs problems with a diskette’s partition table, boot record, FAT (file allocation table), directory structure, lost clusters, and file structure. It can also perform a surface test of the media. To use the program, click Find And Fix Problems to the left of the Integrator screen and select Norton Disk Doctor. Select the floppy drive and uncheck the other listed drives. Click the Options button on the right and select Auto Repair from the General tab. Select the Surface Test tab and then Thorough Test under the Type Of Test section. Select the Entire Disk Area option in the What To Test section. Click OK to return to the main screen and then Diagnose to start the tests. When Disk Doctor finishes, it provides a report of problems that are fixed.

UnErase can recover deleted files from the area on the floppy that contains the deleted files, as long as the area hasn’t been overwritten with a new file. Launch the UnErase Wizard from the Norton Utilities Integrator screen. When the wizard asks which tasks you want to perform, select Find Any Recoverable Files Matching Your Search Criteria and click Next. Click Next through the next three screens that ask for a filename, type, and words in the file. When you’re prompted for the file’s location, select the floppy drive and uncheck the other listed drives. Click Next to begin the search for recoverable files, which will display on the following screen. If the wizard locates your file, select it and click Recover to restore it.

There are many utilities Norton utilities supplies such as the optimizer which is like defrag but much faster, and win doctor which scans and detects error in the registry and allow for repair.
There are more but your concern is the floppy.
Let us know how it goes.
Dave

 

[hewee]

To add to what davey7549 said.

The newer Norton's software you need 95b or higher.

Plus after you have made a copy to a floppy then use Norton Utilities Image to take an image of the floppy. It makes the UnErase work better.
Floppys and zips or any removeable drives it's needs you to do an image on them so it logs all that is on the drive.