I was checking about 25 old zip disks containing Windows data, to copy those with stuff worth saving, so I could then dispose of them since I no longer want to maintain them. All read perfectly, but one apparently was corrupted in some way when I inserted it. In attempting to open it, it displays at least the first of the folders in the structure. In this case, the symptom is that it displayed a folder name that was located on the disk I read just previous to this one.

Is there any Linux software that might let me recover data by reading the data on it in some way not associated with the Windows FAT? There may or may not be multiple folders, but I believe that the files are all image files - probably PNG, but possibly TIFF or JPG.

I am running Linux Mint KDE Rel 9 (Isadora).

Thanks!
Optiker

foremost is 'da bomb'
http://foremost.sourceforge.net/

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Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm not sure I made myself clear. I can't access the disk. When I insert the disk in the drive, the "auto run" tries to read it but fails. I was expecting that the necessary utility would need to be something like a driver for the zip drive that would allow it to access what is there in spite of the "auto run" that tries to open the disk.

Maybe I'm asking for the impossible. I guess Iomega offers a recovery service, so I may have to resort to that.I'd need to mail it in to get a free estimate of cost, and of course, they offer no guarantees.

Thanks again!
Optiker

I think this might be what your looking for, disk spanning and if they are corrupted there is a command that tries to fix

http://kb.winzip.com/kb/?View=entry&EntryID=15

I don't think it matters if the autorun doesn't work. try photorec or foremost on the device and they will try to carve data from anything that is accessible. If that doesn't work, I don't know of anything else that will.

This is off topic.

sml156...This is not a zipped file issue. It involves a Zip disk as used in an Iomega Zip drive - the "old" technology wherein a floppy-sized disk holds 100 MB.

TexMex...I'll take another look at those and see. I'm not a very experienced Linux user, so may be back here with questions if one or the other looks possible.

Thanks
Optiker

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+1 for having a zip disk

Yes, I once had a zip drive, it's not a floppy drive, but it's similar.

FYI if you are trying to mount the ZIP disk via linux the data is actually on the 4 partition. I assume these were as-is preformatted disks. I could not tell if you were using windows or linux to copy them before your troubles began. Another option would be to try photorec in an attempt to recover the data.


BTW did you forget to use "safe to remove" prior to ejecting the disk? Also is this a USB Zip drive?

michaelk...Disks were as-is, preformatted, reading using Windows when problem occurred, I didn't know there wqs such a thing as "safe to remove" for Zip disks under Windows, and it's an internal drive, not USB.

When I tried to open the disk in Linux, it actually read and displayed the folder structure, but when I tried to read the file list of what was in the folders, I got a bunch of garbage...random characters including symbols - maybe a text representation of a binary file, or, since I don't know if there were folders in the disk's root or just files, possibly a text representation of an image file. So, the data could be there, but I'm beginning to think that for whatever reason, Windows may have started to write the data from the previous disk that was not yet cleared from memory to the disk in question. If so, may not be recoverable.

I think I've found the original data for which this Zip disk was a backup, so it may not be worth pursuing further. However, without being able to read the files on the corrupted disk, I can't be sure the content is identical or complete. I do have the original documents - historical family docs, not business docs - that were scanned and comprise the content of the corrupted disk, so in pinch, could compare content to the original data and rescan anything that isn't included.

I'm delaying trying photorec because I'm far from a casual computer user, but also not an expert in tech kinds of things. However, my son and son-in-law who are both computer programmers, are both visiting next week and will be able to help me, or at least give me a bit more confidence, to try it.

Thanks!
Optiker

Try testdisk. Testdisk is also a live cd.

Hopefully an internal reader and not parallel.