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Broken track files from old corrupted HDD

Started by dukeofurl, December 13, 2025, 03:11:35 AM

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dukeofurl

Hi guys, as a Christmas present to myself, I recently hired a data recovery service to try and recover data from the old defunct nonworking HDD from my first computer circa 1993. The recovery service had better luck than I had with my amateur data recovery efforts, and they sent over a file list to show what they recovered from the drive.  Judging from the file types, some of my old Stunts tracks were recovered!

The catch is, that the HDD partition was damaged and the recovery included recovering a mix of good files and damaged/partial files.  I'm yet to receive my recovered data back, but looking at the stunts files I've seen in the file listing, the vast majority of the stunts track files have messed up names, such as "_rack1" instead of "track1", which is a nomenclature I've seen before when recovering damaged (and ultimately nonworking) files from floppy disks. So I assume many of my stunts tracks will be among the damaged/partial files from the recovery. 

When I get the files back (in a few days), I will certainly test them and may upload them here, but I guess I'm wondering - if I have a partial file, might there be any conceivable way to repair it so that I could see what remains of it within Stunts?  Like maybe combining the data I have from the partial file with data from a working stunts track?  In any case, I suppose I'll check that out to see what can be done.  Expecting to actually have the data back in a few days...

dreadnaut

Quote from: dukeofurl on December 13, 2025, 03:11:35 AMif I have a partial file, might there be any conceivable way to repair it so that I could see what remains of it within Stunts? 

Valid track files from Stunts should all be 1802 bytes. Hard drive sectors at the time were around 512 bytes, if I remember correctly. So four sectors to a track: partially recovered files are possible.

If your tracks are incomplete, there'll be a sector missing, could be terrain or track. You'll need a bit of guesswork to understand which chunk is missing, an hex editor to fill it with zeros, and then we'll see what Bliss or Stunts make of it ;D