Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!umich!samsung!sdd.hp.com!ucsd!pacbell.com!tandem!netcom!mcmahan From: mcmahan@netcom.UUCP (Dave Mc Mahan) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: What do you do about a trashed hard disk? Message-ID: <12518@netcom.UUCP> Date: 24 Aug 90 05:02:31 GMT References: Organization: Dave McMahan @ NetCom Services Lines: 40 In a previous article, chris@genly.UUCP (Chris Hind Genly) writes: > >Is there anything I can do besides reformat? You can try all the other remmedies people have posted, but I find that I eventually have to just bite the bullet and reformat after doing a backup. So far, I have only had to do this once. I was able read the disk, but not write to it. I had a recent backup from MRBackup (Thank goodness!) and I just copied the new files to floppy by hand. MRBackup won't run if it can't write to the disk, I guess. That was version 3.x or maybe 2.4, so it may have been fixed by now. > >Is there anyway to minimize the risk of trashing the disk when running >a program known to be unstable. Perhaps: > - Reduce the number of buffers > - No other processes running and using the disk. > - Run out of the ram disk, so nothing will be flushed to the hard disk? You can try to run with just a floppy based system. You do this by not mounting your harddrive and just booting off of a floppy. Kind of a pain, but think of the alternatives..... I'm not sure if there is an 'unmount' command that allows you to protect your disk or not. It sure would be convienient! If there is, you can do development on the hard disk, copy the new test program over to floppies or RAM disk, unmount the hard drive, and do your testing with no hard drive enabled. Trashing the disk is still possible, but MUCH harder, since your program would have to be VERY devious to get at the drive and cause damage. Maybe you could set up just a spare partition on the hard drive of 1 or 2 megabytes and do your testing there after unmounting your main drive. That way, if you trash the partition you will be able to easily re-format it and still have your main partition left intact. Of course, this assumes that you can easily unmount your main partition without having to re-boot. >/ Chris Hind Genly chris@genly.uucp uunet!hsi!genly!chris \ -dave