On Wed, Jun 03, 2009 at 11:32:00AM -0600, le...@gmail wrote: > > I have a friend who is trying to recover a large text file on an old > OS 9 (or maybe 8.5) machine. The file is corrupted, and he is unable > to copy it. I suggested he try to open it in BBEdit, but the BBEdit > 6.x updaters still available seem to be only for the full BBEdit > version and I can't find any mention of the old BBEdit Light > installers.
If the file is so corrupted that it can not be copied in Finder, no normal application is going to be able to read it. Perhaps one could use a filesystem repair utility to recover some or all of the file. Tried fixing the disk with Disk First Aid yet? Caution: runs the risk of losing everything. There are disk block editors which allow one to read (and write) any block on the disk in the raw. If your friend isn't afraid of learning the inner workings of HFS then one might pluck a copy of the file off the disk 512 bytes at a time. Perhaps easier than retyping, but certain to be tedious. With a bit of programming skill one might write an abnormal application that internally walks the HFS trees and allocation tables to attempt recovery of the file one block at a time. The difference between this and reading the file through the operating system and the HFS file system is when reading block at a time you don't have to give up on the first error. Perhaps some of the existing system repair tools do this? TechTool perhaps? The drive is on an old system, might physically move the drive to a newer system to make use of newer tools. -- David Kelly N4HHE, [email protected] ======================================================================== Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BBEdit Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/bbedit?hl=en If you have a specific feature request or would like to report a suspected (or confirmed) problem with the software, please email to "[email protected]" rather than posting to the group. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
