Damaged my System 7 System folder with an HD20 running System 6 - Help!

[old_hitech]

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.

 

[Mk.558]

Just make a normal install of System 7 / 7.1 inside Mini vMac, pack it up into a CompactPro archive, then shuffle it over via LocalTalk. Unpack it and copy it over.

 

[old_hitech]

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.