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From: billsey@agora.uucp (Bill Seymour)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: help my hard drive & diDiskSalv problems
Keywords: dh1: not a dos drive disksalv headonfire
Message-ID: <1990Sep8.192254.5960@agora.uucp>
Date: 8 Sep 90 19:22:54 GMT
References: <1990Aug30.191714.10892@cbnews.att.com> <14249@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Organization: Open Communication Forum
Lines: 67

In article <14249@cbmvax.commodore.com> daveh@cbmvax (Dave Haynie) writes:
>In article <1990Aug30.191714.10892@cbnews.att.com> itch@cbnews.att.com (richard.m.brack) writes:
>
>>DiskSalv 1.42 problems:
>>   So I used DiskSalv 1.42 to recover my files from dh1: to floppies.
>>   It took me about 5 trys to get disksalv to work.  
>
>OK, so CLI-based programs aren't as user-friendly as Intuition-based programs.
>This gets fixed in DiskSalv 2.0, which is ever-so-slowly on the way.
>
>>   It would start counting blocks, and then just hang.  
>
>I've never seen that happen.  If you find a problem I can reproduce, you have
>found a problem I will fix.

	This isn't a problem with Disksalv, it's a problem with his HD
combination... There's an occasional situation in the Supra software
where the device driver doesn't seem to correctly handle a grown error
on the hard disk. What you see is the device driver, and scsi bus, hung
while it tries to access the sector that has the error. you can get it
either by getting a new error on a disk, or by not completely mapping
the old errors out.
	The only real short term solution is to back the partition up
using something that doesn't do a full block search first, then low-level
format the drive while mapping all bad blocks out. The long term solution
is for Supra to get a new programmer in that can update their software
to handle these types of errors. Having Willie do their new software
updates while also doing their new hardware is perhaps just a bit too
much for one guy to handle.

>>What now???
>>   I'm not sure what I need to do now.  Please don't tell me I have
>>   to reformat the entire drive.  I don't think I can format just
>>   a partition, can I?  My drive manual says something about 'zeroing'
>>   my drive or partition.  This sounds like what I should do but the
>>   manual really doesn't say that much about what 'zeroing' is.  
>
>You can certainly reformat just the partition that's damaged.  For example,
>"Format Drive DH1: ..." will only format the DH1: partition, not the whole
>disk (unless the DH1: partition occupies the whole disk, of course).

	Doing a 'zero' of the offending partition would certainly
work if his problem were only and AmigaDOS bad block. 'Zero' from
within SupraFormat is the same as 'Format drive foo: name FooBar Quick'
from CLI. The problem is that as soon as he tried writing again
to that bad block, he'd start hanging the system just as he was
during the block mapping that DiskSalv does.
	One other thing I just thought of that could be his problem...
If he's got termination problems on his SCSI bus, he could be getting
lots of soft errors which could show as that same type of grown error.
In that case, zeroing and restoring would work, as long as he fixed
the cabling/termination problem first.

>
>>RichBrack  
>
>-- 
>Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests"
>   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh      PLINK: hazy     BIX: hazy
>      Get that coffee outta my face, put a Margarita in its place!


-- 
     -Bill Seymour             ...tektronix!reed!percival!agora!billsey
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