Disk Copy .img w/out resource fork

I recently zeroed-out and repartitioned my Wallstreet hard-drive. Before I did so, I put all important files (mostly a decade's worth of Word .docs) in a compressed, read-only .img created by Disk Copy.

Due to cramped-ness of my 2 gb drive, lack of CD burner, and difficulty Apple-Talking between OS 9 and Tiger, I decided to have Disk Copy write the .img directly to my USB thumb drive.

Unfortunately, the thumb drive was naturally in a FAT format. And since it took upwards of four hours to create and compress the .img via my USB 1.1 connection, I decided not to test mount it before I proceeded with the repartition. And so I didn't realize until much too late that the .img I'd created was doomed to fail from the start, being without a resource fork.

So now I've spent two days trying to recover the pristine beauties of the .img data fork but have so far failed.

I've used ResEdit to create a fork and copy and paste into it the three necessary resource types from various uncorrupted .imgs made specifically for the purpose. I've reset creator and type to rohd and ddsk. I've tried fiddling with the code in the bcem resource to trick Disk Copy into mounting the issue. I've turned off all checksumming. I've tried both Disk Copy and the Disk Utilities in Jaguar and Tiger. And I've tried to mount it with a disk-mounting utility in Windows XP, thinking that perhaps a Windows utility might succeed, not needing the resource fork.

Nothing has worked. I get a variety of errors depending on which OS I'm working in, but the gist is the same. File is damaged; can't be mounted.

I've been through all the what-ifs and should-haves, and I've ransacked Google and various boards for ideas, and I'm still stuck.

Does anyone know of a method whereby the contents of an (unfortunately) compressed Disk Copy .img can be recovered without the resource fork? I've got 835 mb of perfect data that I can't access for the lack of a few k.

Are there any bcem resource hacks I can try?
Any third party utilities?
Windows utilities?
I'd even be willing to try hacking Disk Copy itself if somebody could get me pointed in the right direction.

Disk Copy, give me back my legions!!

Thanks for any and all help.

Dave

Wallstreet, eMac, Intel iMac, Mac OS 9.2.x, G3: 8.6, 9.2.2, 10.2.8; e/iMacs: Tiger; iMac: XP

Posted on Apr 4, 2008 9:25 AM

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4 replies

Apr 4, 2008 12:06 PM in response to David Lohnes

Ha HA!

The problem was not quite what I thought.

The problem wasn't that I had saved the .img to a FAT thumb drive. The problem was that I copied the contents of that FAT disk onto my Tiger Intel iMac and then later recopied it onto the FAT drive--without including the OS-9-created FINDER.DAT and RESOURCE.FRK files when I did so; I simply grabbed the .img file, thinking it had all the info I needed.

But then I read this:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=121732

When I went back and looked on my Intel drive, I found the RESOURCE.FRK and FINDER.DAT files still patiently waiting for me. I copied those files (and Desktop DB, Desktop DF, FILEID.DAT for good measure) onto the FAT thumb drive along with the .img file and plugged the drive into the Wallstreet. Lo and behold, only the .img file was visible. OS 9 had automatically taken the information from the other files (including the longed-for resource fork) and incorporated them back into the .img file.

I copied it onto the Wallstreet, and bingo! it mounted perfectly.

Yay!

Perhaps some poor soul in the future will benefit from my experience (although given the state of OS 9 these days, that's probably not too likely.)

Thanks all,

Dave

Apr 7, 2008 1:16 PM in response to David Lohnes

I realize you already solved this problem, but another good way to preserve data when transferring via a Windows file system is to compress (stuff or zip) your files first. I do like disk image files (.img), but compressing your files, although not as handy as using a disk image, is safer. If it's too much stuff (no pun intended) to compress all at once, make several smaller .sit or .zip files. Stuffit Expander is available for Windows, and at least one reliable ZIP program is available for Mac OS 9:

www.cnet.com.au/downloads/0,239030384,5040047s,00.htm

I've spent a lot of time researching how to transfer files because, before i knew what they were, i used to go and delete all those annoying little "._" files and those even more annoying, semi-invisible "Resource.frk" and "Finder.dat" files.....

Message was edited by: paulpen

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Disk Copy .img w/out resource fork

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