I am currently testing a drive for the first time without directory cache because of this awful problem.
After about ten experiences with this, I'm pretty confident of the solution.
Boot with no start-up, run DiskSalv as quickly as possible and 'Repair' the drive after locking out DOS (in the menus, somewhere). This should give DiskSalv all the time it needs to repair the disk.
When the 'You will need to reset' requester appears, reset as soon as there is no activity. If you answer this requester, AmigaDOS will attempt to continue validating the disk, ruining all that time (in my case, a 512Mb partition takes about 10 hours).
Don't bother doing anything else with your machine. Leave DiskSalv as the ONLY process. Just turn the monitor off and walk away (frustrating, I know).
If this doesn't work, there are other ways, but they're even less fun (especially if the drive contains multiple instances of the same directory structures with half of the entries marked as 'deleted', very complicating...).
Hope this helps.
benJamin
