HDD Validating Nightmare

[chris]

Anyone come across this strange error?

Yes, I have, and it's a pain to fix.  This is your problem:

Disk is partitioned and formatted with the standard 3.1 ROM version of FFS and is setup as DC-FFS.

Do not use Directory Caching on hard drives!  It provides no benefit and (I forget most of the techy details) if it goes wrong, the validation procedure takes longer and more memory.  This results in the crash you have been experiencing.

I can't remember how I fixed mine.  I think it involved booting with no startup-sequence and running DiskSalv so it locked the hard drive before the validation procedure crashed.  Then you can use DiskSalv's validate option to fix the disk (maybe get DiskSalv on a bootable disk instead if the validate crashes too quickly?)

Next step is to use ReOrg to convert the filesystem to plain FFS International.  Using ReOrg may also help if DiskSalv doesn't validate the disk.

Chris

[chris]

The only think that seems to sort it is to make sure you do a FULL format of your partition before you install anything on it.  It may take all night, but prevention is much better than cure, especially when talking about your files.

I haven't had any problems since using the OS3.5 FastFileSystem, with my partitions of type FFS Intl.  My current drive is in fact a Quick Formatted one that was previously used in a Windows laptop.  There must be loads of random bytes in free space, but I haven't had a single failed validation with it.

Chris

[chris]

Oldsmobile_Mike wrote:
While I do not doubt what you are saying for one second, can you give us a clue where to get the technical details you mentioned?

Try Olaf Barthel :-)  I think I originally found out from a mailing list, it is something to do with the directory structure having to be updated in two separate places.

Chris