[Info-vax] Best way to get what I can off a failed VMS Disk?

[Chris Townley]

On 24/10/2020 15:51, geze... at rlgsc.com wrote:
> On Saturday, October 24, 2020 at 9:37:42 AM UTC-4, Chris Townley wrote:
>> On 24/10/2020 14:18, abrsvc wrote:
>>> On Saturday, 24 October 2020 08:49:42 UTC-4, Chris Townley wrote:
>>>> I have a failing ODS-2 disk in my Alpha (HPE VMS 8.3)
>>>>
>>>> What is the best way to recover those files that are recoverable, with
>>>> the drive going into mount verify?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Chris
>>>
>>> A lot depends upon the reason for the failure. I have had success replacing the controller board on an SBB drive with another to read the "failing" drive. Both must be the same however.
>>>
>>> Any idea where the failure is? Controller, disk itself?
>>>
>> It is a hobbyist machine. Only real interest is to save some interesting
>> bits when I ported the work AXP to I64 - work after my last backup.
>>
>> SCSI controller is fine - I am booting off that and I have added another
>> disk.
>>
>> I will try the backup/physical approach - after chilling the disk!
>> Presumably followed by anal/disk/repair on the new disk?
>>
>> Chris
> Chris,
> 
> If you want to try doing a /RECOVER , I would do the BACKUP/PHYSICAL to a save set, and restore the backup onto a new drive to attempt the /RECOVER. I mentioned the BACKUP/PHYSICAL to preserve the information so it could be manually referenced. Doing an automated recovery could make it impossible to take the manual reconstruction path.
> 
> - Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com
> 
Good idea - will do

Thanks

Chris