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Also, a couple of times I've had dying drives that work OK for a few minutes after a cold boot, and then they (heat up and) die. I've had good luck throwing the drive in the freezer (in a ziplock bag) for a day, then powering up it, recovering as much as I can until the drive chokes again, lather, rinse, repeat, until all recoverable data has been copies off to a good drive.

[...continued from previous message. AG]
LSoft Technologies - Active@ Boot Disk, Active@ File Recovery and Active-Undelete
Micware Software - Encopy
Naltech - Multi Data Rescue (optical discs only?)
Nucleus Tecnologies - Kernel Recovery for FAT+NTFS
Ontrack Data Recovery - Easy Recovery Professional
Paragon Software Group - Paragon Rescue Kit
Partition Support - FindPart (and other utilities)
Phelps, Eric - Uncheck (for .CHK files)'
Piriform - Recuva
Phoenix Technologies Undelete+
ProSoft Engineering - Data Rescue PC
Quetek Consulting Corp. - File Scavenger
R-Tools Technology - R-Studio Data Recovery
Recover Data - Windows Data Recovery
Regall LLC (dba Object Rescue) - File Rescue and Data Rescue and Any Reader
Runtime Software - GetDataBack
Smart PC Solutions - Smart FAT Recovery
SoftLogica - Handy Recovery
Stellar Information Systems - Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery
SysTech Software - RECOVER Fixed/Floppy Disk FAT32 /16 /12 v3.0 Release 3 (floppy diskttes and hard disks <2GB)
TOKIWA - DataRecovery (erased files only?)
Zero Assumption Recovery - ZAR32 for Windows

Programs that I have personally used and had good experiences with are Acronis' Recovery Expert, DataRescue's Photo Rescue, Naltech's Data Rescue line and Runtime Software's GetDataBack line.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

[...continued from previous message. AG]
LSoft Technologies - Active@ Boot Disk, Active@ File Recovery and Active-Undelete
Micware Software - Encopy
Naltech - Multi Data Rescue (optical discs only?)
Nucleus Tecnologies - Kernel Recovery for FAT+NTFS
Ontrack Data Recovery - Easy Recovery Professional
Paragon Software Group - Paragon Rescue Kit
Partition Support - FindPart (and other utilities)
Phelps, Eric - Uncheck (for .CHK files)'
Piriform - Recuva
Phoenix Technologies Undelete+
ProSoft Engineering - Data Rescue PC
Quetek Consulting Corp. - File Scavenger
R-Tools Technology - R-Studio Data Recovery
Recover Data - Windows Data Recovery
Regall LLC (dba Object Rescue) - File Rescue and Data Rescue and Any Reader
Runtime Software - GetDataBack
Smart PC Solutions - Smart FAT Recovery
SoftLogica - Handy Recovery
Stellar Information Systems - Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery
SysTech Software - RECOVER Fixed/Floppy Disk FAT32 /16 /12 v3.0 Release 3 (floppy diskttes and hard disks <2GB)
TOKIWA - DataRecovery (erased files only?)
Zero Assumption Recovery - ZAR32 for Windows

Programs that I have personally used and had good experiences with are Acronis' Recovery Expert, DataRescue's Photo Rescue, Naltech's Data Rescue line and Runtime Software's GetDataBack line.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Just to correct you my friend, i work with NOVELL servers, and i have people connecting to these using Prosoft Engineering NOVELL clients for Mac OS X. To connect to a Novell Server from Mac OS X all you need is the right client/s. you will find my favourite of the numerous novell clients at this site http://www.prosofteng.com/products/netware_client_ x.php/ The second correction!!! Newer versions of Mac OS X, are optimized for the higher end processors, if you run Mac OS X on a 233MHz what do you expect. I could even say that DOS 3.22 runs faster than linux on that same processor simply because DOS is well suited for lower end processors. If you do a benchmark test, btn Linux/Mac OS X on applications compiled for the IBM Power 970FX you will notice fluctuating results, for Databases(MySQL, Postgre) Linux might be slightly faster, on other things Mac OS X will be faster too. so really these 2 operating systems are in real competition. Mac OS X just works, Linux works, but with glitches here and there.

As I user (not administrator) I guess I can't sneer at Netware, but I can grumble a lot. It seems like a great system if everybody uses windows. I'm at a university where the infrastucture is all windows boxes connecting to netware servers. We scientists can buy whatever we want, however, and since we are intelligent and creative people, that means a lot of us have macs ;-) For a university that doesn't officially support macs, our department sure has a lot of them (maybe 20%) and our IT guy (who doesn't know a heck of a lot about macs) makes an effort to support us anyway.

Now, for some reason, Novell farms out the mac client developement to a company called Prosoft Enginerring. The OS 9 IPX client was alright, though it lacks some of the features of the windows client. But the new OS X IP client is AWFUL. It behaves like an early beta release, but they call it a 1.0.2 release. I mean, it really is terrible. Kernel panics, the need for frequent rebbots, etc. I've emailed the tech support people at prosoft, and it seems they are really trying to get it to work properly, but they are a long way off. Which leaves the growing number us OS X users in our department with crap. I read about this native file access option and came running to our IT guy and begged him to install it, but he doesn't want to for reasons that are beyond me. He said stuff about security (my boyfriend says appletalk over IP is secure) and losing the ability to push things through the clients (he never pushes anything to the mac users anyway).

So unless you're a windows user, it really sucks to have a netware server. What is the client situation for linux users? Is there a client? Is it this bad?

Not only can you get a NetWare client for the MAC (OS X) but you can download the demo from an ASP page. For those who don't want to bother with the reg info, here is the link to download it directly. The serial they gave me was 9602-3082-0060-5950-2. I assume it is time limited or some such other nonsense.

Not only can you get a NetWare client for the MAC (OS X) but you can download the demo from an ASP page. For those who don't want to bother with the reg info, here is the link to download it directly. The serial they gave me was 9602-3082-0060-5950-2. I assume it is time limited or some such other nonsense.

There is a bias against Macs in many IS Depts. Some of it is just leftover snobbery (no command line / 1-button mouse / easy to use = not a studly OS) and some of it's frustration. MacOS has always done things differently & often idiosyncratically. It's file-structure is tough to accommodate on other OS's and it's networking, while fine amongst Mac's has generally suffered from poor non-Mac clients (Netware a case in point.)

For one thing it's difficult to manage large numbers of Macs without investing a bit of time & effort into specialized solutions. While many enterprise-management packages include some level of Mac support it's often a separate add-on, sometimes at additional cost, and generally works differently then the other parts do.

Then there's application support. While Macs do have a full range of applications they're not always completely compatible with their Wintel counterparts. MS Office for Mac is a fine product but some of it's files are subtly different from the Wintel side. There is no Access database but instead most folks use FileMaker (a product with it's own strengths & weaknesses but nonetheless a *different* product.) WordPerfect for Mac has been dropped & while Lotus does offer Notes for the Mac the client can be, well, challenging at times. MS Exchange support via the Mac Outlook client is best left for truly masochistic - it's a truly evil bit of code & you'll be better off using Exchange's web-interface.

These issues have left Mac's the odd-child out for harried IS staffers, fairly or not. The fact that Mac users tend to require less support & be more productive isn't lost on many IS people but it does get forgotten in the daily run of problems. Where Wintel is the standard anything different is often (unfairly) considered a 'problem'. Thus Mac costs & issues stand out and are an easy target, again likely not fairly.

To your own case more specifically as you've discovered there's been erratic support from Novell for Mac clients on Netware. Originally when Netware offered Mac support it was at an extra cost for the server package. Then Novell rolled NW-for-Mac into the base Netware offerings at no additional cost.

Unfortunately the Novell MacOS/Netware clients were awkward & didn't blend in well with the MacOS environment. Eventually Novell outsourced MacOS/Netware client development to Prosoft Engineering Inc. with the rationale that a Mac-dedicated company would do a better job. The up side of this was the new clients behaved like native MacOS networking clients, the down result was one now had to pay extra to ProsSoft for the clients.

Then the agreement ran out and folks were stuck with so-so drivers on an evolving MacOS (rapidly becoming less compatible) & no options from either company. Recently (March 1st) there's been a new contract signed & ProSoft has resumed development. Needless to say customers of both companies are irked. Check for details at http://www.prosofteng.com/netware_faq.asp

In the meantime Novell has announced NW6 will support Mac's using IP natively (along with apparently every other OS) but of course that's a bit off before it's deployed widely. In the meantime it's either use ProSoft's drivers or wait for NW6.

My advice: Why do you want to be on the larger network?

Here's my take on the various services:

1. File Servers: Presumably there are files you could benefit from having direct access to; for collaborating more closely with your clients if nothing else. On the other hand you've gotten along thus far without this so something is working.

   To provide Mac support on one file server would be an administrative problem (making the server unique, requiring reevaluation of it's loads, increased filespace usage, determining if the backup systems support Mac namespaces, altering disaster-recovery plans, etc.) It might or might not be possible depending on a number of factors but its certainly not farfetched assuming there are no direct technical obstacles & the administrative will to make it happen.

   To enable Mac support on *many* servers would be a very large undertaking & thus very unlikely for only a few users. I wouldn't even bother pushing for this, the cost/benefit ratio just isn't there.

2. Email servers: This is a different set of issues. As I noted the Mac Outlook Exchange-client is a scurrilous thing deserving only of being burnt at the stake then the stake driven through it's author's heart (if any can be found - the heart that is.) (Do I sound like I don't like this application?) Here while it might be nice it's not worth the hell.

   The situation promises to change over the next year and the newer versions of Outlook for Mac are *almost* not completely foul but I wouldn't hold your breath or fight for this quite yet until the darn thing is actually out. In the meantime trust me, use the PC & be happy.

3. Application Compatibility: Here is where you might run into some issues. Eventually the State is likely to adopt some sort of widely distributed software that willl *require* Wintel. It shouldn't happen but it does, over & over again. This is a long-term strategic problem for you & your department. At that point you'll likely run into a problem with the single-PC access point.

4. Forward Migration:Apple's MacOS is undergoing fundamental changes. You'll be fine using your current OS & applications for another few years but the change is coming & it will affect you folks sooner or later. It's too soon to predict accurately but under MacOS X it appears networking will be significantly improved. The same holds true for Netware 6.0 - it promises much better Mac support. Either or both of these changes could provide opportunities to better connect your desktops to the larger network.

My solution would be to invest in Virtual PC. It performs exceedingly well considering what it's doing (running a full-PC environment in your Mac) & will allow your Macs to serve double-duty as PC desktops.

You'll be able to copy files to & from your Mac via VPC to the larger network environment & IS can treat it all as just another PC client & ignore the whole Mac-aspect of it.

Frankly it's the best of both worlds: You get your wonderful Mac desktops & all of the applications & tools you've invested in, IS gets to treat you folks as just more Wintel users and you can (within VPC) run all of the applications everyone else is without any special provisions or 'gotchas'. As you're graphics folks your Macs are likely up to snuff for running VPC reasonably already so you're 90% of the way there.

Sometime around service pack 5, ProSoft's product stopped working for us. We really didn't notice too much because our Macs are not that active, so we were slow to respond to their reports of it not working. By the time we got service pack 6 loaded, Novell made some key changes which convinces me it's not GOING to work until ProSoft releases some more patches. Long story short, we don't have that working any more. It's been a nightmare. There is a separate IPX client, however, requiring a separate login, also from ProSoft. In the *past* it has worked fine for us, but our Mac people insisted on being able to use the chooser, so we haven't pursued it that much. But for someone that's willing to be reeducated a little, there's nothing wrong the the native Mac client.

Maybe you're not interested in accessing files on any of those servers (and from the sound of it, the state network is not about to load a 3rd party product). But if you want Internet access, that works well, most of the time. Now depending on how they have their firewall and proxy configured, there's not much more to it to get a Mac connected other than get an IP address and configure your browser for the proxy server, if there is one (you can pretty much duplicate the settings from Netscape for Windows). YMMV, but here's the quick rundown on how we have our Internet access configured. We use a proxy server and block quite a bit via our firewall (both incoming and outgoing), and track proxy/web usage via NDS username. Thus, when we configure a browser to use the BorderManager proxy server, it tries to figure out who is requesting access. With Windows, there is a nice little utility that works in conjunction with Client32, clntrust.exe, that will tell the proxy server who the logged-in user is. If that isn't loaded--it's not available for Mac--it brings the user to a secure web page and asks them to enter their NDS username and password. That's all there is to it, and it works fine. Any trouble we have is usually NDS, not Macintosh related.

Now as for the stories you get about why the powers that be don't want you to hook your Macs up: (I assume you don't have them networked at ALL?) I admit I'm no Mac expert but this is what I've heard and experienced. Appletalk is a chatty protocol, but it doesn't bring our network to a halt. I wouldn't say it's any more chatty than SAP and other IPX related traffic, so if they still use IPX, who cares? Plus, if you're speaking of a multi-site WAN, aren't there firewalls and routers that would filter some of this out? If you're using TCP/IP from the Mac exclusively to get on the Internet, the rest of the WAN won't see the Appletalk traffic.

As for MacOS being unstable or hackable, well, I find it kind of unstable too sometimes, but so is Windoze. It's really the user's concern if his machine crashes while he's using it. I *don't* think it's all that prone to being broken into. Windows machines are probably worse off in that arena. And again, so what? Don't they have firewalls from the outside world preventing this kind of thing?

As for them having a personal vendetta against Macs, well, my department and I have the same vendetta against the remaining Macs we have on campus. :-) But I bet if you have enough control to get some IP addresses (we use DHCP, which helps) and configure the machines, they probably won't even notice. Your Macs will function safely, securely, and unnoticably on their network, even if Novell is involved (not that that even makes a difference). I don't have any sort of research to prove it, but I do have similar experience to share.

Hope that helps.

"I say consider this day seized!" -Hobbes