Abort, Retry Fail? or sometimes Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail? was an error message displayed in DOS when unable to read data. The user is prompted to hit either A, R, I or F accordingly.

Abort - Aborts the operation.
Retry - Tries to read the data again.
Ignore - Hands "default data" to the application requesting the data.
Fail - Tries to continue without the data. Fail nearly always proves unsuccessful as it will result in missing data.

Retry is in most cases the only hope for success.
Data error reading Drive C:
Abort, Retry, Fail?

'Abort, Retry, Fail?' was the phrase some wormdog scrawled next to the door of the Edit Universe project room. And when the new dataspinners started working, fabricating their worlds on the huge organic comp systems, we'd remind them: if you see this message, {always} choose 'Retry.'

Bad'l Ron, Wakener
Morgan Polysoft
by Atratus August 8, 2006
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