Member Avatar for Beaver Newby

I am replacing the HardDrive on a 350mhz iMac g3. The hard drive replacement has went ok, meaning I was able to replace the OS 9 and OS X operating system with out much trouble.

So far I have the original drive intact but failing. I have two partitions on the new drive and both OS 9 and OS X installed. My problem is the moved data files will not open properly.

The original files were created with Appleworks 6's word processor. The files were slow opening on the old hard hard drive, but they did open with the correct formating, Now they refuse to open with the correct formating on the new hard drive.
I can see most of the text when I open them with the TextEditor.

I used a USB Drive to copy the files.

What did I miss copying the files. I still have the originals. 98% are still intact but I don't know how many more times I can access the old drive before It will not be readable.

Also they don't seem have the right three letter file type(none) on them for the appleworks 6 word processor so the Icons are not as they should be. I also have not been able to get appleworks 6 to show up in the application list.

Equipment: Slot load Imac G3, 350mhz PowerPC 750, 80 gb hard drive, 576 mb Ram, two partitions, one with OS 9.22 and the other partition has OS X fully updated from 10.4.6 to 10.4.11.

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Dani AI

Generated

For — short, practical diagnosis and a recovery plan that fits an iMac G3 / AppleWorks scenario.

Most likely cause

  • When Classic Mac files are moved via a USB stick formatted for Windows (or otherwise to a non‑Mac filesystem) the Finder metadata and the resource fork that holds AppleWorks formatting can be left behind or split out into AppleDouble ._ files. That loss explains why documents show as “Unix executable” and open only as plain text. (loc.gov)

Immediate priorities (do these in order)

  1. Stop heavy use of the failing drive — further reads increase failure risk.
  2. Make a copy/forensic image first. If the drive is flaky use a sector‑level tool built for damaged drives (GNU ddrescue); if it seems healthy you can also make a DMG with Disk Utility. Do the imaging before more file operations. (gnu.org)

How to recover formatting and files

  • Work from the image or from a Mac‑formatted target (HFS+/APFS). Copy using tools that preserve HFS metadata and resource forks (Finder can when target is HFS+, or use ditto from Terminal).
  • If the USB copy left ._ companion files, merge them back before opening the documents with dot_clean. Examples:
dot_clean "/Volumes/USBdrive/FolderWithCWK"
ditto -V "/Volumes/Source/AppleWorksDocs" "/Volumes/Target/AppleWorksDocs"

Use ditto because it will preserve resource forks and Finder metadata when copying. (ss64.com)

If metadata is already lost

  • Try LibreOffice (it has AppleWorks/CWK import filters) or drag the .cwk onto Pages/Numbers/Keynote to extract text and formatting where possible. The Apple error “#-1700” is an AppleEvent coercion failure (app received data in an unexpected type), which fits missing metadata rather than purely content corruption. If the drive is deteriorating and these steps are critical, consider imaging with ddrescue or professional recovery first. (books.libreoffice.org)

Cautions

  • Do not write to the failing disk; work from an image or a mounted read‑only copy. If uncertain, imaging with ddrescue and then working on the image is the safest route. (gnu.org)
Member Avatar for Beaver Newby

Finder says the files are "unix executable" but they were created using appleworks 6.

my newly created apple works files have a .cwk extension.

what has happen to these files?? "open with" gives a error message "an unexpected error occured. #-1700"

help

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