Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!boulder!sunybcs!ugkamins
From: ugkamins@sunybcs.uucp (John Kaminski)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Unvalidated hard disk
Message-ID: <5214@cs.Buffalo.EDU>
Date: 12 Apr 89 05:03:30 GMT
References: <7350009@hpscdc.HP.COM>
Sender: nobody@cs.Buffalo.EDU
Reply-To: ugkamins@sunybcs.UUCP (John Kaminski)
Organization: SUNY/Buffalo Computer Science
Lines: 34

In article <7350009@hpscdc.HP.COM> hal@hpscdc.HP.COM (Hal Work) writes:
>After rebooting and trying to save a file, I got the message 'Error
>validating disk.  Key 33330 already set.'  This is my hard disk.  What
>happened?  What can I do short of reformatting and reloading?  How can
>I prevent this from happening again?

Firstly, only the guru knows what happened :^)  That could have happened
because of a power surge, a temporary power drop, or any of a zillion things
could have happened to cause a glitch that put the whammy on your disk.

Secondly, I thought disk problems are why C-A gave us DiskDoctor.

Thirdly, if you don't already have one, try a spike protector.  Or, if you
really want to be safe, get UPS (no, not United Parcel Service, an Uninter-
ruptible Power Supply).  That not only takes care of the spikes (too much
voltage) but also power brownouts and drops (too little voltage) as well
as honest-to-goodness blackouts.

In fact, because all computers ocasionally freeze for one reason to
another, when:

1.) am I going to remember to save to disk (and not RAM disk) often?
2.) is an editor going to be written that realizes that fact and save
      automatically?
3.) is DEC EDT going to be ported to the Amiga (ha!) or something like it
      that creates a history file (called a journal or .JOU file by DEC)?

as a sort of "P.S." -- have any of you done about an hour or two of change
mode (in EDT) editing, have the machine go down, and edt/recover your file?
It's something like watching a videotape of your editing, but locked in
fast forward visual search.

P.P.S. -- while I'm on the subject of editors, I couldn't BELIEVE the diff
between microemacs distributed for extras 1.2 and 1.3!  What a speedup!