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Author Topic: A1200: need urgent help restoring my hard drive  (Read 2142 times)

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Offline rvo_nlTopic starter

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A1200: need urgent help restoring my hard drive
« on: May 29, 2020, 07:47:46 PM »
Hey guys, its been a while. But I could use some tech advice here. All of a sudden my hard drive stopped working. At first I suspected my Ide-Fix, then my Gayle / IDE port but now I found out with a newly bought a1200 that it is probably the HD itself after all. It's a 120GB IDE Seagate.

When I check it out in HDToolbox it shows up as 'Unknown' with no further Partition information. I really want to get it working again since it contains a lot of data (I have backups but not up to date ones).

Now, I suspect the RDB got damaged somehow. I've used the ReadRDB program from Aminet in the past so I do have a backup of my RDB. But ofcourse I am very hesitant to just overwrite the RDB. What I did try though, is backup the current RDB but then it tells me it 'cannot allocate 10MB+ for RDB'. The RDB file I wanted to restore is just 137kb, how can the RDB have grown that big?

a) Is this huge RDB a symptom of it being faulty?
b) are there any salvaging tools I could try, first? Or something that inspects the RDB?

Any other ideas are welcome.

Edit: Ok I have managed to make a backup of the RDB as it is now (indeed 10MB+ in size), by plugging in the ppc card and providing external power.. such a hassle! But it's done so that should make it a bit safer to restore my old RDB.
« Last Edit: May 30, 2020, 11:57:45 AM by rvo_nl »
Amiga 1200 (1d4) Kickstart 3.1 (40.68), Elbox Power/Winner tower (450w psu), BlizzardPPC 603e+ @240mhz & 060 @50mhz, 256MB, Bvision, IDE-fix Express, IndivisionAGA, 120GB IDE, cd, dvd, Cocolino, Micronik Keycase, PCMCIA Ethernet, Ratte monitor switcher, Prelude1200, triple boot WB3.1 / OS3.9 / OS4.1, Win95 / MacOS8.1
 

Offline rvo_nlTopic starter

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Re: A1200: need urgent help restoring my hard drive
« Reply #1 on: May 29, 2020, 10:45:53 PM »
Before you start any repair attempt you should find a computer that can run Linux and has an IDE connector. This you will use to make an image of the whole drive, if possible.

Hmm, that will be a little tough, but I may have access to one such machine at work. What tool should I use to do that, and how can I restore the drive back to another one? Even if it is of a different specification?
Amiga 1200 (1d4) Kickstart 3.1 (40.68), Elbox Power/Winner tower (450w psu), BlizzardPPC 603e+ @240mhz & 060 @50mhz, 256MB, Bvision, IDE-fix Express, IndivisionAGA, 120GB IDE, cd, dvd, Cocolino, Micronik Keycase, PCMCIA Ethernet, Ratte monitor switcher, Prelude1200, triple boot WB3.1 / OS3.9 / OS4.1, Win95 / MacOS8.1
 

Offline rvo_nlTopic starter

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Re: A1200: need urgent help restoring my hard drive
« Reply #2 on: May 30, 2020, 07:54:09 AM »
Hm. Can you actually connect the harddrive to another computer? At home?

You mean apart from the other Amiga with HD?

I think I have some ATA-SATA adapter so I can probably hook it up to my pc. What did you have in mind? :)
« Last Edit: May 30, 2020, 07:54:59 AM by rvo_nl »
Amiga 1200 (1d4) Kickstart 3.1 (40.68), Elbox Power/Winner tower (450w psu), BlizzardPPC 603e+ @240mhz & 060 @50mhz, 256MB, Bvision, IDE-fix Express, IndivisionAGA, 120GB IDE, cd, dvd, Cocolino, Micronik Keycase, PCMCIA Ethernet, Ratte monitor switcher, Prelude1200, triple boot WB3.1 / OS3.9 / OS4.1, Win95 / MacOS8.1
 

Offline rvo_nlTopic starter

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Re: A1200: need urgent help restoring my hard drive
« Reply #3 on: May 30, 2020, 02:58:36 PM »
thanks, that is a great idea. I will first try to restore my RDB though. at least I now have a backup of the current one.
Amiga 1200 (1d4) Kickstart 3.1 (40.68), Elbox Power/Winner tower (450w psu), BlizzardPPC 603e+ @240mhz & 060 @50mhz, 256MB, Bvision, IDE-fix Express, IndivisionAGA, 120GB IDE, cd, dvd, Cocolino, Micronik Keycase, PCMCIA Ethernet, Ratte monitor switcher, Prelude1200, triple boot WB3.1 / OS3.9 / OS4.1, Win95 / MacOS8.1
 

Offline rvo_nlTopic starter

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Re: A1200: need urgent help restoring my hard drive
« Reply #4 on: May 30, 2020, 03:26:25 PM »
It seems solved. Was able to restore the RDB and everything shows up again. Going to find a good backup drive to prevent this from happening again :D Thanks for the help.
Amiga 1200 (1d4) Kickstart 3.1 (40.68), Elbox Power/Winner tower (450w psu), BlizzardPPC 603e+ @240mhz & 060 @50mhz, 256MB, Bvision, IDE-fix Express, IndivisionAGA, 120GB IDE, cd, dvd, Cocolino, Micronik Keycase, PCMCIA Ethernet, Ratte monitor switcher, Prelude1200, triple boot WB3.1 / OS3.9 / OS4.1, Win95 / MacOS8.1