OK, My Turn! CF Hosed..... ARG!

[giZmo350]

Last night my A1200 with OS3.5 (yea - broke down and bought a MoBo from Airy on ebay)  started getting the dreaded checksum errors on my WORK partition and then Intuition had a fit and couldn't load the desktop till canceling error. Then the WORK partition became invalidated.... the partition wouldn't auto-validate so I quick formatted it. Rebooted and all was well with booting the SYS partition. I started copying my WORK folders back from PCMCIA drive and the drive hung up middle thru copying the last folder - my WHDLoad folder. Had to turn off the A1200. BAM!

Now the CF card won't boot and both partitions are not auto-recognized in HDToolBox. I can see the CF card and am able to repartition the drive (have NOT saved yet).

Questions are:

I know my old partition sizes but not the EXACT size of SYS. If I am close, do you think SYS will boot?
If I save the changes to the drive and it still won't boot, can I try to resize the SYS partition again defining a slightly different size? Or does saving a new partition destroy the data?

Another option in HDToolBox is to "Verify Data On Drive". If I'm close to my original SYS partition size, will the option read my data or would I have to save the Partition changes first to use that option?

If I have to restore my SYS and WORK partitions to newly formatted partitions, what's the easiest way to activate the PCMCIA adapter to get my backups copied over to new partitions?

Don't wanna drag this out as I do have a 2-way IDE adapter to connect up an IDE CD-ROM and start a whole new install but dang, I just put this baby back together a week ago!

I was recently thinking of a new install with OS3.9 but I need to write down a buttload of configs off this OS3.5 install first.

Which is going to bring up a whole new topic; how to access a USB CD-ROM thru Poseidon for a fresh install of OS3.9.... that would be ideal!

Mega thanks for any suggestions!

[SACC-guy]

Lots of questions! I'll answer the easy one.

Yes, changing the partition size, wipes the data.

[paul1981]

Have you tried Disksalv or similar? Are there precious files you need to recover?

HDToolBox's Verify Data On Drive feature is for checking the physical media, not the filesystem. So that's no use.

Regarding re-installation, I don't see why you should have to open the A1200 case. Not when there's a PCMCIA slot to hand and also a floppy drive. Just ask RedWarrior if you don't believe me!

[giZmo350]

Have you tried Disksalv or similar? Are there precious files you need to recover?

Not tried Disksalv... got my doubts....  no precious files LOL....

HDToolBox's Verify Data On Drive feature is for checking the physical media, not the filesystem. So that's no use.

Gotcha.......

Regarding re-installation, I don't see why you should have to open the A1200 case. Not when there's a PCMCIA slot to hand and also a floppy drive. Just ask RedWarrior if you don't believe me!

Not sure what this means..... I'll pass on asking RedWarior.... I think he has enough of his own troubles ATM. :hammer:

C'mon, I'm being sincere here....

I'll start another post about adding Poseidon USB support to an ERD or creating a Poseidon startup disk later....

[Thomas]

Last night my A1200 with OS3.5 (yea - broke down and bought a MoBo from Airy on ebay)  started getting the dreaded checksum errors on my WORK partition and then Intuition had a fit and couldn't load the desktop till canceling error. Then the WORK partition became invalidated.... the partition wouldn't auto-validate so I quick formatted it. Rebooted and all was well with booting the SYS partition. I started copying my WORK folders back from PCMCIA drive and the drive hung up middle thru copying the last folder - my WHDLoad folder. Had to turn off the A1200. BAM!

Now the CF card won't boot and both partitions are not auto-recognized in HDToolBox.

The symptoms you describe point to a dying CF card. You should not try to repair it, it will only die further. Put it into an USB card reader, connect it to a Windows PC and use WinUAE, dd, DiskImage or whatever to create a full backup image of it. Then use the image in WinUAE to salvage the data. Do not write to the card any more.

I know my old partition sizes but not the EXACT size of SYS. If I am close, do you think SYS will boot?

No, partition sizes must match exactly. However, if you know exactly where Work started, then SYS will most likely fill the entire space before it.

If I save the changes to the drive and it still won't boot, can I try to resize the SYS partition again defining a slightly different size? Or does saving a new partition destroy the data?

Yes. But as mentioned above, writing to the card will most likely cause more damage to the data.

But this is not necessary. There are programs which can investigate the exact partition sizes automatically. For example: http://thomas-rapp.homepage.t-online.de/downloads/rdbrecov.lha