UNIXpc crash & can't restore cpio - HELP! (long)

[David Mundhenk]

Please don't flame me for cross-posting this! I need help and
don't want to miss those who don't have unix-pc.general!
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I suppose disk crashes are like door knobs - everyone gets
a turn.  Yesterday was mine. I hadn't had my system up in a
few days, so I got a nice cold drink, sat down and hit the
power switch.  I wish I hadn't.
(I know what happens when you ass-u-me, but I am led to believe
this problem is disk related.)

Just for info, I have a 7300 with 512K RAM on the motherboard
and a 512K expansion for 1MB total. I have a 30MB CDC full height
(~45ms.) drive of unknown history (it was used when I got it).
The drive is powered by an external PC power supply (150W) since
last winter my 7300 power supply decided it was overloaded.
I think the last time I did a full restore was around last Dec.
I have motherboard P3...P5 and am running UNIX3.5.1.4.

When the machine started up, it put several rectangular boxes
on the screen at the upper left, as always. Then little dots
appeared all over the screen. After numerous tries, some of which
yielded panic messages which I copied down but don't have in front
of me right now, it finally booted. I promptly backed up some stuff
I added recently and hadn't had a chance to yet. (whew!).
Then something happened and /usr/lib/iv got trashed and I couldn't 
format more floppies. Things looked pretty messy, and I'm not
fluent in fsdb, so I decided to do a full restore.
(actually, on the next several reboot attempts, the system locked
up after the message "real memory: .... available memory ....P3..P5").

The diags showed a read error at block 8104 (or so - don't remember)
so I put that in the bad block list and reformatted. Restored the
foundation set, dev set and a few other *bare necessities*.
System came up just fine. Then I tried to restore 
my cpio backup (saved with cpio -ocvumB>/dev/rfp021
on 10 sector floppies). On disk #3, I got the message:

"I/O failure on header: I/O error
Can't read input; aborting."

I tried to 'dd' in this floppy to poke around, and 'dd' said the same
thing. 

W H A T   G I V E S ?

This is the first time I've had trouble with a cpio backup on this 
system. Could it be a bad floppy, are my heads dirty, or what?
Is there a way to fix this?  I know which files are in this section
of the backup, and they aren't critical, so if there is a way to
bypass this section somehow, I'm all ears! (I tried cpio with a
"!pattern" at the end - it still bombs).

Should I be making TWO backups of important stuff? I'll sh*t a golden
brick if I can't restore these files!  Actually, most of them were
sources from USENET and friends, so with some blood, sweat, tears,
and bended knees I can probably replace them...

P L E A S E   H E L P !

Any and all replies will be received with great joy and rapture!

Thanks for all your help - everyone has been tremendously helpful
before. I am a very regular reader of this newsgroup, and I know
some of you gurus will probably have easy solutions to my plight.
(Lenny, Thad, John, & others, are you listening?)

Thanks!

Dave Mundhenk
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EMAIL: ...!att!holin!doc  | "I can't complain but |   /^,
VOICE: (201)-580-4943     |  sometimes I still do"|  /  } _, , , __
#include <std.disclaimer> |  - Joe Walsh          | /_./ (_l |/ <~_
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EMAIL: ...!att!holin!doc  | "I can't complain but |   /^,
VOICE: (201)-949-5308     |  sometimes I still do"|  /  } _, , , __
#include <std.disclaimer> |  - Joe Walsh          | /_./ (_l |/ <~_