Tax Tips

Q. I have an Iomega 100 to archive data. One disc has 10 years of
taxes and some investment data. I recently deleted a few files and
did a defrag. All was fine. Later, the screen went blue and I received
a message saying, "The disk must be checked for consistency." After
going through a procedure, it listed files and folders with volumes
and such. It showed the disk to have 18 percent free space. Then it
said there was an error writing the FAT. I have since been unable to
access the disk. Can you help me?

A. Back when I was in college, I saved an important paper on a floppy
disk. On the day it was due, I decided to edit it once more. To my
horror, it refused to open. Something had happened to the disk.

A friend suggested I take it to the campus computer technicians. One of
those guys used Norton Utilities to recover the data and transfer it to
a new disk. That made me an instant fan of Norton Utilities. Norton
Utilities is still around. It now is part of System Works. This package
includes other programs, in addition to Utilities. It is priced at
around $70. You'll find it at:
http://www.symantec.com/sabu/sysworks/basic/

Another option would be to contact Iomega. The company offers a data
recovery service for its products. Iomega guarantees 100 percent
customer satisfaction that recovered data is valid and usable--or
there is no charge. Costs and turnaround time vary depending on the
complexity of the recovery case. You can get a free price quote at
the Iomega Web site: http://www.iomegadatarecovery.com/index.html

You may be able to find a local company that does the same. Just be
sure to check the Better Business Web site to be sure the company
performs as promised. Here's a link to use for that:
http://search.bbb.org

I have found Zip disks to be reliable. But all computer disks can
fail. If you are moving data from your hard drive to a disk for
storage, you still need a backup. I would simply make three disks,
rather than one or two. Rotate the disks' use by weeks.

Keep in mind that the 100 MB Zip drive was introduced 10 years ago.
That is very old technology. It is possible that the problem is in your
drive, rather than the disk. You may have to replace it.

Thanks for writing. I sure hope today's tip helps you.
Kim Komando