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From: jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: ERRORS on scsi drive!
Message-ID: <20991@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 27 Apr 91 05:43:36 GMT
References: <12870003@hpsad.HP.COM>
Reply-To: jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 34

In article <12870003@hpsad.HP.COM> paulc@hpsad.HP.COM (Paul Christensen X3073) writes:
>I have a large ( 700Mbyte ) scsi hard drive hooked up to
>my amiga 3000. Funny - If the slightest thing goes wrong - ie. a guru
>- my harddrive will develop errors. Once I got a 'unvalidated disk' error.
>Another time, the system would just crash. 
>
>Is this normal Amiga behavour? I expect that the system would not eat 
>my harddisk, even  if it had a software error while writing to the disk. It 
>should ( i would expect ) give me an error concerning that file that was 
>being written to, but not a complete partition error!

	Well, any crash when writing to disk can skrag the partition (or
rather the partition won't validate - all the rest of the info will be
readable, except the file _or_ directory being written to.  It is possible
to lose the entire partition if you crash in the middle of a write to the
root block, but very unlikely.)  Note these are not bad block errors, they're
"something in the FS points to a garbage sector" errors.  Disksalv and even
diskdoctor can repair or restore things like this to some degree.  There's a
close to 100% way: I can edit filesystems (with disked) live.  Send plane &
hotel tickets, plus a fully-paid 2-week vacation in the bahamas, and I'll come
and fix your disk.  (That's a joke, guys/gals...)

>Is there a magic solution for the unvalidatable error? Or is there a way to
>add layers of 'safety' to my data? Do others have this problem? 

	Avoid broken programs while writing to disk.  1/2 :-)

-- 
Randell Jesup, Keeper of AmigaDos, Commodore Engineering.
{uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!jesup, jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com  BIX: rjesup  
Disclaimer: Nothing I say is anything other than my personal opinion.
Thus spake the Master Ninjei: "To program a million-line operating system
is easy, to change a man's temperament is more difficult."
(From "The Zen of Programming")  ;-)