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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: heatdave on September 27, 2006, 08:59:13 PM
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I teach at a Jr High and have been using a Video Toaster in an Amiga 2000 for over 10 years for our morning announcements. It has worked great all of these years. Now I am having problems that we could not save our credits pages. I checked and sure enough the DH0 drive is completely full. I went into it to try and delete some files to clear up some harddrive space. Every time I try I get the message "Volume DH) not validated". I do not know what to do to free up the space I need.
Please Help
Thanks
Dave
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probably your disk is very full to alterate the RWED sector-controller of your HDD...
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Ahh... Well, the actual problem is that your hard drive partition went unvalidated. (When that happens, the Amiga marks the drive as 100% full to stop further writing and corruption of data.)
Something like Dave Haynie's DiskSalv (http://www.aminet.net/package.php?package=disk/salv/DiskSalv11_32.lha) should do the trick for you. And the best part, it's free! (legally!)
Also, if you have a copy of QBTools, that'll fix the drive up for you too. (That was a popular backup/tools program back in the day.)
Hopefully you have a way of getting files to and from your Amiga. If not, pose that question, and I'm sure someone here can help you out there, too. ;-)
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@heatdave:
First of all you shouldn't need to do anything. Just watch it. The HDD light should show the HDD being very busy. Also the boot process should need about twice as long as usual. If this is true, just wait for it to finish. It should validate itself automatically. Only if in the end of the validation process you get a message like "checksum error in block xxx" or "block yyy used twice" or something like that, then it is not able to repair itself and only then you need one of the recovery tools mentioned above. But first let it finish its work.
You didn't mention your system configuration. With Kickstart 1.3 and below you need a file called Disk-Validator in the L directory of the boot drive. If the file is not present, the partition cannot validate itself. In this case, you have to boot from a Workbench floppy disk with this file in the right directory. But only on Kickstart 1.3 and below. Since Kickstart 2.0 this file is in ROM.
Bye,
Thomas
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You probably don't need DiskSalv or QBTools. Just wait until the hard disk light goes out and then it should be validated. If it's not, then copy all the data off of the drive, format it, and then copy the files back on. If the drive won't validate itself, and you can't copy the files off of it, then DiskSalv ot QBTools may be your only option.
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moto
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Indeed, that's probably your best bet alright to copy all the data off to a separate partition, format it and then copy it back. It may fail part way through though if there's a corrupt file somewhere. If it does, leave out that file and copy everything else across, as usually there's only a single corruption that causes this.
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Thanks for the info. Now to ask for your suggestions. I did finaly find DiskSalv but now I need to get it on to the machine. I found out my floppy drive is having problems. I do remember that it is the old single density 800K drive. Can I swap this out with a standard PC Double Density 1.4meg drive? Will it recognize the drive and can I use standard PC formated disks. If that will not work that I do have another Amiga 2000/toaster that I can swap the drive with. If I have to do that then the question is how to get the software on the disk as my PCs will not read and right to the Amiga formated disc.
If I can get DiskSalv to solve the problem then great. If not then I assume I need to do the copy the drive off to another and then reformat the disk. Well can I hook up a standard PC harddrive? Will the Amiga recoginize it? Can I and do I need to then reformat the drive to do the transferes?
One last possible path is I think that I have some kind of SCSI card in the machine. Should I pursue trying to put a SCSI drive on it?
Thanks for the help
dave
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@CDE_MusiX
probably your disk is very full to alterate the RWED sector-controller of your HDD...
You know, nothing in that makes any sense.
EARN MONEY when surfing WEB & FORUMS!
Oh please... Don't we have enough spam already?
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You have three options.
1. You can send the software to Amiga by using null-modem cable and Amiga Explorer software by Cloanto.
2. You can format 770k double density floppy under MS-DOS, and use this to transfer data between windows and workbench using crossdoss under workbench
3. You can read/write to Amiga formatted harddisk on PC using WinUAE
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A PC drive cannot be used, unless it has been modified. And only some brands will work easier than others. I was able to get a few Teac and Chinon drives converted. Try to clean the heads of your drive first. Mount PC0: with CrossDOS and you can read a 720k PC FAT 12 disk that you copied the files to. If you have KS 1.x you will need to obtain a PC filesystem driver like CrossDOS, Messydos or Fat95.
Good luck that is all the fun, getting old systems running!
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Is the HD also 10 years old ? If it's bigger than 4.3 Gb DON't use any of those old tools!
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if you can find an old scsi hard disk you can connect it to the controler, format it and transfer the files. probably your controler is a GVP 2000 HC+8 or similar. you can find more info at the big book (http://amigahardware.mariomisic.de/index_e.html) and maybe the correct software at installer heaven (http://www.l8r.net/install/hdc.html)
the same think happend to me back in 1995 with an a2000 at work, and i back up the 40mb disk in floppys... format it, and restore data back to the disk. it tooks me more than a week, but it was the first step to start understanding the way that amiga dos and workbench operates.
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Piru wrote:
@CDE_MusiX
probably your disk is very full to alterate the RWED sector-controller of your HDD...
You know, nothing in that makes any sense.
EARN MONEY when surfing WEB & FORUMS!
Oh please... Don't we have enough spam already?
Talking about SPAM :roll:
And as far as I know the post you made didn't add anything at all to this topic.
[ontopic]
My bet would be to use DiskSalv or QBTools. You should be able to read MS Dos/Windows formatted DD disks. That would be the easiest way to transfer files from the PC to the AMiGA. Unless you have a CD ROM drive in your AMiGA. That way you could burn the files to a CD and transfer them to your AMiGA. And if that doesn't work/isn't an option I guess the only option left is to backup the files to another HardDrive and format the invalid partition/drive. All of this can be a huge pain in the ass when you have no spare AMiGA or a working method to transfer files from a PC to an AMiGA.
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I think his only option is to add another HD and format, then transfer all data over. I doubt he has a CDR(W) connected and configured!
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This is going to take a bit more than usual to answer. Let's back track 10 years. You really need to know what you have inside the case for more helpful answers.
(1) Formatting the original drive: NO... NO... NO.... Unless you have all the Toaster software, and manuals.
(2) System specs has not been declared. I guess: an original A2000 Toaster, AmigaDOS 2.04 likely, and a SCSI card, likely an A2091. No CD-ROM drive.
(3) Hard drive is less than 2 gig.
DiskSalv and using a 3.5" disk cleaner package was excellent advice.
I have A2000 internal and external floppy drives. If you need another SCSI hard drive for the transfer, I also have a few under 2 gig that I would pre-format to your specs. Let's not keep kids in the dark without morning announcements.
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I don't understand why all people here give so complicated advice. The only thing one has to do if a drive is not validated is to wait. Wait for it to finish its own attempt to repair itself. Only if, really only if an error message appears you need to do your own recover actions.
Nobody here, especially not Heatdave mentioned an error message and what the message says. So either it is already ok now or it is still working. In the latter case, wait a little bit longer. It should not need more than five minutes, then the drive is ok again. Without any manual action. Just don't switch it off in the middle, because then it will start from the beginning again.
Regarding DiskSalv, it offers an option to repair the partition. But usually if you repair a partition, some file are lost. The first run of DiskSalv should always be Salvage in order to backup all files to another partition or another drive. Only if you are sure that all important files are saved, you should try the repair. Repair always has the usability of the partition as priority. Files which can only partially be repaired will deleted without the chance to get them back. Only Salvage has the priority to save all files, even those which are only partially available. This applies to all recovery tools. In-place repair is not a good choice when attempting to rescue important data.
Bye,
Thomas
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Well, waiting for the drive to validate itself doesn't always work. I've waited many a time in vain and I still had to resort to using DiskSalv to fix the partition.
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By waiting I mean letting the Amiga validate during the night and seeing the thing still being busy the next morning..
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@Thomas: more or less you are right about validation but you are missing something here. the possibility that if he has workbench and rom 1.3, the disk validator handler file to be damege from the sadam virus that it was very famus at his time and the reason that they move the disk validator to the rom from workbench 2 and up. if this is the case, the validation can't be finish.
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Nobody here, especially not Heatdave mentioned an error message and what the message says. So either it is already ok now or it is still working. In the latter case, wait a little bit longer. It should not need more than five minutes, then the drive is ok again.
Of course, he said he got the error message "Volume DH0: not validated" in his original post... Heck, it's in the title!
He also said he was searching around for files to delete. Therefore, it is fairly safe to assume he looked for more than 5 minutes. Probably scratching his head for a matter of 30 minutes or more before starting off searching for help (while probably STILL leaving the machine running as he did.)
If the error is still there, it's probably a good time for DiskSalv.... :lol:
Only Salvage has the priority to save all files, even those which are only partially available.
I never understood this. What good is a partial file, anyhow?? You're going to have to recover that file from backups one way or another. Might just as well do it from the start.
I don't understand why all people here give so complicated advice.
We try to give concise and useful advice. Something getting quite rare in the Amiga community, as well.
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To sum up, as I see it:
1) Boot the machine and wait until the hard drive light goes out. This may take a while.
2) Wait a bit longer. :)
3) Eventually the drive light will go out. If it doesn't, your HD is probably dead or dying and the machine is constantly trying to read a bad block. Time to get a new (second hand) HD.
4) If the drive light goes out with no notification, then it's validated. Yay! Now don't turn it off when a file is being written again, ok? :)
5) If it comes up and says "Read error on volume xxx:" or something then and only then is it time to worry about other software. I myself have had DiskSalv mess things up, so I use QBTools, but DiskSalv is usually ok if you're careful. Could some kind soul in the States stick a floppy with DiskSalv on into a Jiffy bag and mail him?
And don't worry about the 100% full bit, that's just because it's unvalidated.
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I never understood this. What good is a partial file, anyhow?? You're going to have to recover that file from backups one way or another. Might just as well do it from the start.
If you don't have a backup of an important file (e.g. because you were editing it right when the crash happened), then you are glad about any part which can be rescued.
However, "partially" in my post might not necessarily mean the data is only partially left but that perhaps there are some inconsistencies in the file system structure but the data is fully intact. FFS has many pointers between blocks. Salvage mode might be able to recover a file which cannot be repaired in-place.
Additionally Salvage mode does not alter the damaged partition. So even if DiskSalv fails to recover the file, you can try another program or even send the HDD to an expert who can write a program especially for your case.
Once you ran an in-place repair, the file system will be usable again, but files which are deleted during the repair are lost forever. There is no expert who can recover deleted files from a repaired file system structure.
I had cases where DiskSalv in repair mode cleared an entire partition, as if it was quick-formatted, while salvage mode was still able to recover most of the files.
Bye,
Thomas
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What is the present status on this problem?
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Sorry to dig up an old thread, but I figured itd be good to put it in the same place for anyone else with this issue who finds it in a search as I did.
I was installing the game Aqua from AmiNet on my A2000. Halfway through the first disk un-lha-ing, I got a guru meditation. After reboot (even after power cycles) I'm getting "disk not validated" on DH0: and I cant get it cleared up.
I tried running DiskSalv in Validate mode, and when it rebooted I got checkusm errors on a disk block, or the same validation errors in CLI. So, no change.
I'm trying it now in Repair mode.
As far as I know the drive is in good shape, so... I hope this works.
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@#&*@$&@! DiskSalv guru'd.
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It's probably not DiskSalv which caused the guru, but the HDD driver, because it happened with lha, too.
How big is the drive, where is it connected to and what are the versions of the operating system and the HDD driver ?
To get a good overview, please run check4gb (http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/check4gb) and posts its output here.
Bye,
Thomas
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I found DiskSalv 2 always very reliable (of course working under 4 GB) but the worst error I think needed 3 or 4 runs before solved. (not validated => error on block xx => block used twice error => out of range error => fixed; order of errors not necessarily this). Validate was mostly enough to get things fixed, but after I got fast enough drives and SCSI3, it was much easier and faster to copy the problematic partition to another and reformat and copy back.
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I'll have to run that when I'm home. The system was an ebay purchase, and is an Amiga 2500 with a GVP G-Force 030 Combo accelerator/SCSI card. It's running WB 3.1 with 3.1 ROMs. The hard drive is a 4GB split into 2 partitions and connected to the G-Force. There is a CDROM connected to the same SCSI.
I'd hate to wipe it since there's a ton of good software on it. I dont have an easy way to back it up either.
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If its only 4gb, a couple of cds or put a dvd burner in and back it up to dvd
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The only CD/DVD burners I have are IDE, and I dont have an IDE interface in my A2000. Probably the best I could do would be to dismantle the Amiga and take the drive out, find a SCSI card for my PC, and copy the files there. I could put a second hard drive in the Amiga and copy files there, but with all the disk validation/checksum errors I'm getting, I'm not sure that would work so great.
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I always found ABTools making much better results on filesystem fixing than DiskSalv. And in sane time.
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Im starting to form a theory here...
I was installing Aqua from a CD. More specifically, I was doing an "lha x cd0:aqua.lha" when it crapped out. I never needed DiskSalv before so it wasnt on my hard drive. I had to burn it to a CD and try to run it off that... where it also guru'd. Im now getting errors from CDs where I put a CD in and get a CD0:???? icon (on known good CDs). I was trying to copy DiskSalv from CD to hard drive, and it doesnt even see the CD as a valid filesystem now.
The CD drive is on the same SCSI chain as the hard drive.
I wonder if the CD drive is hosed, and the validation problem the result of the system resetting in the middle of writing out an LhA's contents to DH0:...
I'm going to see if I have a spare SCSI CDROM here, and try a swap.
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Another trick to try:
Hold both mouse buttons down on a cold boot and select boot with no startup sequence.
This will stop any running of software that may interfere with the OS correcting the validating of the disk.
It has worked for me!
Cheers
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I dismantled the computer (stupid case design making it necessary to rip out all cards to get to screws that hold in CD drive!) and swapped out the CD... as an added bonus, I found a 32X SCSI CD drive in my closet, as opposed to the 12X in there when I got the computer. The OS now could see the DiskSalv CDROM. I copied the files to DH1: (which isnt giving errors) and ran the Install script, installing DiskSalv to DH1:DiskSalv. Its running now, doing a Validate on DH0: and on like the third pass (Hash Check) it found an error, on one of the Aqua files in DH0:tmp/ which is where I expected the error would show up. When running DiskSalv before from CD, it never found any errors.
I cant say 100% for sure the CD drive I had was the problem, but it seems a good candidate. Now I just need to wait a year or two for DiskSalv to finish running and fix the errors. Hopefully it doesn't guru out again haha.
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{bleep}ing guru'd. Argh!
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In the interest of beating a dead horse, I'm giving DiskSalv one last try, in Repair mode. If it fails, I'm giving up on it and trying something else.
Given that I know where the error is... Anyone know if removing the file would fix the error? I cant in Amiga because the partition isnt validated. Say I mount the SCSI drive in Linux and remove the Aqua directory though, then put it back in the Amiga... might that force it to clear up?
If nothing else when I have it under Linux, I can do a full backup so if all else fails I can wipe and reformat. It will be a real pain in the ass to take it apart and put it in my PC though, so I pray to the Amiga Gods that this last DiskSalv attempt works.
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Letting it run overnight in Repair mode did the trick.
Anyone wanna buy an awesome broken CD drive? hehe