NewDeal Technical Support Document 219

DAMAGED DOCUMENTS


Preventing damaged files and recovering damaged documents

Nothing you do can provide 100% security against damaged files, but there are steps you can take to reduce the chance of damaged files and to recover the information in damaged documents.

Prevention

Use a hard disk utility program to perform routine maintenance. There are many commercial programs available, such as Norton Utilities Disk Doctor, or PC Tools' Disk Fix or ScanDisk which is included in MS-DOS 6.0 and above. You can also use the DOS CHKDSK /F command, although CHKDSK only checks the file allocation table, it doesn't do a comprehensive check of the hard drive.

Before you turn off your computer, completely exit your NewDeal software, then wait a few seconds.

If you have a line in either your AUTOEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS file that refers to FASTOPEN, delete the line entirely.

Good Habits

Use the Backup feature in your NewDeal applications to save backup copies of your files. Whenever you make changes to a document, pull down the File menu and choose Backup, then Make Backup.

Copy your documents to floppy disks. It's best to use two or three disks and rotate them so that each successive time you save the file you use a different diskette. If you always copy to the same diskette, you might copy a damaged file over an older, undamaged copy of the file.

Use a hard disk utility program to check the integrity of your hard disk on a regular basis. The DOS CHKDSK command can find errors when damage has already been done, but a good commercial hard disk utility program will repair minor hard disk problems before your files become damaged.

Backup your entire hard disk. You can do this with the DOS BACKUP command or any commercial program that backs up your hard disk, like CP Backup or FastBack. If your hard disk should completely crash, a complete backup will save you the effort of re-installing and reconfiguring all of your programs, as well as recovering your documents.

Keep your original installation diskettes in a safe place in case you ever need to re-install your NewDeal software.

Recovery

If you do experience a damaged document:

If you have used the Backup command from the File menu, you can restore the file from the backup copy, which can be found in the \USERDATA\BACKUP folder.

Restore the file from a backup copy on a floppy disk, if you've made one. (See your User Guide or manual for instructions on how to copy files to and from floppy disks).

Use a commercial hard disk utility program to try to repair the damaged file. These programs can't restore data that has been lost, but they might be able to repair the file so that you can at least open the document or recover some of the information in the document.

You can use the SALVAGE program to recover the text portion of the document. For instructions on how to use Salvage, see the Salvage Instructions document in the directory where you installed your NewDeal software.

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Last Modified 17 Feb 1999