Corrupt mdb files

  • Thread starter Thread starter Elizabeth A. Swoope
  • Start date Start date
E

Elizabeth A. Swoope

Access 2000, variety of OS (NT and anything after),
students working on single-user MDBs on 3.5" floppy disks

I'm teaching a computer literacy class and we're working
with Access now. I'm seeing a rash of corrupt files.
Whether you try to open them by getting into Access and
using File/Open or double-click on the filename, the drive
spins and spins and Access or WinExplorer croaks.

Some of the disks were brand new at the beginning of the
semester (end of August). Some are recycled.

I can't tell whether the disks are damaged (we haven't
seen a high number of damaged disks until now).

We instruct the students to compact and repair the data
file before they close it each time.

These are not critical data files, but the students need
to work on them a couple of different labs so if they are
corrupted after the first lab, the students have to redo
all the work for the first lab before working the second
lab.

We don't have any option other than working on floppies.
The data files are not large (200K or less, and only two
or three on a floppy, and only one open at a time).

Does anyone have any advice on stopping the
damage/corruption?
 
Are the students actually running their databases from the floppy, or are
they just copying to/from the floppy? If the former, try the latter
approach. I haven't done so lately, but in the past, I have successfully
executed small Access DBs directly from floppy (I don't remember what
version of Access, but could have been Access 2.0) but that's not the best
way, I suspect.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP
 
Access 2000, variety of OS (NT and anything after),
students working on single-user MDBs on 3.5" floppy disks
Click to expand...

I'm with Larry. If there is any way that they could copy the .mdb file
to hard disk, run it there, and compact it before copying back to the
diskette, they'll likely have better luck. Floppy drives are the "poor
stepchildren" of hardware - most manufacturers have basically written
them off, and they probably simply aren't reliable enough for the
repetitive writing and reading of active database use.
 
John and Larry,

Thanks for your input. I was afraid of this. There are
untold problems with your suggested approach! Most public
access computers on campus are "locked down" so that no
one can write anything to them. On the computers in our
labs, the Temp directory can be written to, but that's a
different can of worms. No matter how many times we tell
them to erase everything from Temp first, then copy their
files to Temp, then copy their files back to their floppy
and erase everything from Temp, many of them don't do it.

And that means that they end up turning in someone else's
work as their own (you know right off the bat when you see
someone else's name in the footer of a report), and that
is a violation of the Code of Student Conduct, even when
it's caused by stupidity.

We may have to go that route, though.
 
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