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From: tomb@hplsla.HP.COM (Tom Bruhns)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Subject: Re: Need to make HD validate
Message-ID: <18730001@hplsla.HP.COM>
Date: 1 May 91 17:57:27 GMT
References: <1991May1.062224.24977@en.ecn.purdue.edu>
Organization: HP Lake Stevens, WA
Lines: 24

bevis@en.ecn.purdue.edu (Jeff Bevis) writes:

>Well, during some heavy disk activity tonight (involving much reading and
>writing simultaneously), my system crashed.  Now, I can't seem to the
>second partition of my HD to validate.  Any suggestions?  (In desperation,
>I used DiskDoctor, to no avail).  I DON'T WANT to have to reformat.  Is
>there a program out there that'll put the disk back into shape?  I don't
>care if I lose files.  I can reload them from backup.

Well, my experience with a similar problem:  I had started to get some soft
read errors occasionally, and finally got the validation failure message.
I tried DiskDoctor (I hear that it's not the best thing to use), which did
find some errors.  Still didn't validate.  Tried deleting all the files.
Still didn't validate.  Tried an Amiga-level format.  It wouldn't format.
Finally, last possible resort, re-initialized the disk (a low-level, write-
new-tracks-on-the-disk format with the software that came with the drive
interface).  That required initializing the whole disk, which meant I would
have to restore all four partitions...after AmigaDOS formatting them.  I
did all that, and after three or so months have not seen another error.

Advice:  try it by steps as I did, but be prepared to do a full
initialization, DOS-format, and restore, if you don't get it to work with
fewer steps.  Disclaimer:  this advice may be worth less than you paid for
it.