I have a Macintosh SE/30 with a SCSI2HD with many applications and files that I have acquired and created over 5 years. The SD card in the SCSI2HD drive is not accessible with the back cover installed. As a result I have not made a backup copy of the SD card contents. My plan was to use my FloppyEmu (FE) to copy a disk image from the internet to my SE/30. I put the FE onto the rear disk drive port and turned on the computer. I did not know this, but the last time I used the FE was on my Macintosh Plus as a HD20 drive. Well, the SE/30 started to boot off the FE in HD20 mode and before I realized what was happening I saw a message on the SE/30 screen that said the system 7.1 (on my SCSI2HD drive) was being changed to system 6.08 that was on my FE HD20 drive. I hit ‘CANCEL’ or ‘STOP”, and then turned off the SE/30, but the damage was done. I removed the FE drive and restarted the SE/30 and it would not boot. I got a message on screen that stated the drive is not recognized, do you want to initialize the drive?
Disappointed, I turned off the SE/30 and remembered that I had the BMOW ROMinator II installed on my SE/30. I turned on the SE/30 and pressed ‘R’ to boot from ROM. The ROM booted to System 7.1. I was able to see my SCSI2HD drive contents. All the Apps, Games and files were intact and useable. I looked at the System folder on the SCSI2HD and saw that it had some system 6 related files and a few other files. Outside of the System folder was the Finder with a 7.1 version number. I was glad to see that all my files were in good shape.
Now, I would like to know how to rebuild/replace my damaged System folder and make it bootable again.
I do have some System 7 install 1.44 MB disks as well as System 7 “Tuneup” disks. Should I use these?
The problem I see is that these diskettes have an archive installer file and do not have a System folder that I can easily copy over to the SCSI2HD System folder. Will using these disks force me to initialize the SCSI2HD drive?
One other idea I had was to swap out the memory card on my SCSI2HD and install a new memory card and install System 7 on it, then copy the new System folder contents to a 1.44MB disk and then re-install the original SCSI2HD memory card and copy the System folder from the 1.44 MB disk to replace my damaged System folder.
I’d appreciate any recommendations/suggestions.
That certainly sounds like a bewildering experience. I don't understand how or why booting one volume would make any modifications to another. Even if the volume you booted was actually a System 6.0.8 installer, it would not normally make any changes without prompting to continue.
The SCSI volume is evidently undamaged, since it appeared when booing from ROM disk, but it no longer has a "blessed" System that can be booted by the Mac ROM. In an ideal world, all that is needed is to move the correct System and Finder back into the System Folder on the SCSI volume to re-"bless" it.
I decided to try and replace the SCSCI2HD System folder with the contents of a FloppyEmu(FE) HD20 mode System 7.1 system folder. I verified the contents of the FE HD20 System 7.1 System folder by booting up my Macintosh Plus with the FE HD20 System 7.1. I made notes of the contents of the System folder to compare to the SCSI2HD System 7.1 System folder.
I booted the SE/30 with ROMinator II boot to ROM System 7.1 and opened the SCSI2HD System folder and observed that the folder contents matched the FE HD20 System 7.1 System folder. I was surprised as I thought the contents was different yesterday. Not seeing any difference, I decided to try to boot the SE/30 using the SCSI2HD System and found that it booted just fine. No message that the drive was unreadable and no message Do you want to initialize the drive. I was surprised because I really did not do anything to the contents of the SCSI2HD System 7.1 System folder. I shut down the SE/30 and restarted the computer successfully booting from SCSI2HD System 7.1. I tried a few applications and verified that they were working just fine.
Not sure what to think about this whole experience. For now on I will make sure that my FE is not set to HD20 mode when I store it away. By doing this I will avoid the possibility of corrupting the internal hard drive of my other Macintosh computers.