Accidental HD overwrite - help!

[save2600]

OMG... so I am having the Amiga week from hell  :-(  

Trying to setup a CF/IDE<>SCSI/A2091 scenario for my A1000 and going between my A2500 and A1000, I accidentally 'saved' the info for the A1000's HD as my A2500's. And as such, my partitions are gone, etc. Is there a quick and easy way to restore my A2500's HD, its partitions and info? One click of the mouse was all and now I'm screwed!! (again)

Pleeeease help!

[save2600]

Yeah, all that sounds kinda scary to me. lol   All I did was screw up DH0:, which is a tiny partition (190mb) that only has the OS installed on it. My only backup resides on a USB flash drive. As it sits now, I can install 3.1, install Deneb's software (after all I've been through, I will admit total mental retardation for not putting that on floppy yet, which BTW: should have been delivered that way!!!!!!!!!!), install MUI (and whatever else Deneb's flash is missing) and I should be able to then copy my Flashdrive contents over to DH0. Sound easy??

I am dead tired of installing 3.1, removing my LCD monitor, unplugging everything on my A2500, setting it up and a workbench that I don't have to hunch over, dragging a 1080 from the basement to upstairs, unscrewing the case, removing Deneb, changing an emergency jumper on Deneb, copying her software, installing all the necessary & 3rd party (yet still missing and you'd better hope to hell you have it somewhere) stuff for Deneb/Poseidon/Trident to work, re-installing Deneb, re-booting and hoping to hell the installer works, inserting your flashdrive into Deneb, going into Poseidon/Trident and changing settings so the damn Amiga recognises what the hell you just inserted, open a CLI and copy the contents over to your blown partition. UuGgHh!!!!!   Oh and if all of this accidentally works the first few times, you may then screw the A2500's case back together and pretend your Amiga is alright (for the time being). lol

Was just thinking there was a quicker, easier way to reclaim the RDB or whatever gets written over when you choose 'yes, save changes to HD'.   lol

[save2600]

Right now, all my computer does it boot directly into an OS3.1 looking command prompt that doesn't do jack. Everything was patched into Deneb's flash to boot from a flash drive, but I seem to have lost that capability for reasons unknown. When I re-flashed her, all the necessary files were there. Currently, inserting a Workbench disk does nothing. The computer goes straight away to the blank HD. Inserting the 3.1 Install disk does nothing either and I was able to tell it that I had a 2060scsi.device before my computer was rendered useless.

I was thinking I could change the HD boot drive's priority, knowing that my Flash backup is at 0. Changed the 2060scsi.device to a boot priority of 5. Oh and I changed the drives name from DH0: to QDH0: as to not make the same mistake again. upon reset, the computer loads it's Kickstart patches and says:

'Amiga ROM Operating System and Libraries
Copyright 1985-2002 Amiga, Inc
All Rights Reserved
1>'

Almost no functions here at all. LoadWB doesn't work either. Can't load HDToolbox or anything now.

[save2600]

That's strange. What happens when you disconnect your harddrive? You do get a insert disk screen? Can't you hold down the mouse buttons for your early startup screen and boot from your floppy that way? Perhaps your floppy is not the floppy you once knew? check it on your A1000? Hmmm, speaking of your A1000 even though I own 3 I've never booted one up, can't you place this 2500 HD inside, boot from your A1000 HD as per normal and then fix your ill 2500 HD?

Sorry if I am missing something obvious here


edit:
Just pondering, perhaps you need to remove your flash component until you get the system back on its feet, you're trying to work with too many variables here...

I haven't tried disconnecting the HD yet, but I'm certain I'd get the familiar Kickstart screen. KS 3.9  :-)  

Good idea about holding down the mouse buttons. Totally spaced that out. It worked as I was able to disable the HD from booting. Still can't boot from Deneb though, even though all that bootable enabling stuff is in her flash. But now I can make headway re-installing 3.1, etc. A project for tomorrow. Yay. Oh - and BTW: the obvious things are sometimes very helpful as some of us have a nasty habit of going after the toughest solutions. My floppies are just fine and I have several backups.

And about getting the A1000 to do anything useful on an SFS/OS3.9 system... Hmm... might be able to "fix" the HD that way, maybe be able to change its boot priority, but OS 1.3 is all I have on that A1000.

I'm really trying to restore this HD without opening the computer. Using HDinstTools, I can see my usbscsi.device. If I change the boot priority of that, should it not be seen 1st, before the HD? I need a refresher course on the meaning of the boot priority I guess. A value of -1 would be first in line, compared to a 0, right? And isn't there a way to combine devices using HDinsTools? Seems it can only deal with one at a time. When I go into Controller Config, it says to use something called Oktagon Prefs. WTF?!?   lol

Making good progress here. Without fudging around any inside the computer, I was able to put 3.1 on my HD's boot partition. Have a barebones 3.1 system and since all the necessary files have been flashed to Deneb, there is some functionality going on, even though Poseidon is not on the HD (it's in Deneb herself). So... mounted FDH0:, but the damn thing keeps telling me it's not a DOS disk! Seriously, this is my only backup that contains all my patches, etc. I NEED to get the contents off this flash and onto my HD! And no, I still cannot boot from the flash card. It's never ever even an option in Early Startup.

Do I need to install a new RDB to this flash?? And in doing so, would I erase its contents?

[save2600]

Thanks bnice, I downloaded a few of those tools and will have to educate myself on how to use them someday. For now though, I did manage to re-install my boot partition and OS from USB Flash without opening the computer - whee! lol

It did take the typical 3.1 installation and several libraries and programs in order to get Trident to work. After getting CD support back and playing around with the HD settings, it was fairly straightforward re-installing the OS. Valuable lesson learned here though is to have Poseidon on CD or floppy to make all of this that much easier. I did see where Chris has 4.0 available as a download on his site, so that really helped. Actually, the main lesson I learned here is to simply keep your backups on something a little more friendly and native to the Amiga, such as a scsi based CD. Thanks to all that replied!