My data is all gone

[ncafferkey]

Unless I've missed something, shouldn't you be able to boot from your back-up drive again if you disconnect the main drive (and maybe the CDROM too)? You've already booted from it, and you didn't change the partitions on it since then.

Also, AFAIK a quick format only writes to a small number of blocks, so most of the data should still be intact on the main drive. The question though is whether the available recovery tools are able to find old partitions in these circumstances.

[amigagr]

ncafferkey wrote:
The question though is whether the available recovery tools are able to find old partitions in these circumstances.

in my amigas all the known hd tools don't work with sfs and the disk of motorolin if i remember well was formated with sfs

-edit-
@motorolin: as i see you didn't save the rdb before you start all this mesh... now, if you remember excactly the number of blocks that was on the partitions in first place and you install the disk with sfs from scratch and setup the partitions with the same blocks the partitions would be back ok... or... they sould be back ok if you didn't involve the ffs and quick format the drive...

[motorollin]

I don't have enough information to recover the original drive. However, I see no good reason why the backup drive isn't working, as the partitions are still there and haven't been formatted since the data was copied on to them.

In HDToolBox, I can see that SFS is installed in the RDB with the identifier "0x444F5303". The partition is set to use the filesystem "SFS/00" with identifier "0x5346300". Could this be the problem, that the partition's filesystem identifier is incorrect? If I change the identifier to match the one for SFS and then save the changes, will it destroy any information in the partition, or can I safely change the identifier to get it working?

--
moto

[amigagr]

the identifier of sfs in my disk is 0x53465300 sfs\00
the 0x444F5303 is the identifier of the ffs
it's a bit risky but i thing that you must remove the ffs completly from the disk. the identifier that you write for sfs is wrong too. read it carefuly.

[motorollin]

FFS has already been removed from the disk. Can I change the identifier on the partitions to match the one SFS is set to in the RDB?

--
moto

[amigagr]

yes you can, the easyest way is to remove the sfs and reinstall it. after the sellect of sfs from disk the identifier is ''editable'' (if i can use this word). you must type this: 0x53465300. after this the identifier is selected automaticaly when you set the file system of the partition

[motorollin]

Great! I can't do this yet as I don't have SFS on a floppy disk, and I have no floppy drives except the one in my Amiga! I'll copy SFS to a DOS floppy tomorrow at workand copy it to my OS3.9 Emergency Disk.

Thanks a lot - here's hoping it works :-)

--
moto

[amigagr]

format the floppy in amiga because the winxp don't do it for 720kb disks:) and good luck

[motorollin]

Yep will do, I'll format PC0 and put sfs.lha on it. Then I open HDToolBox, remove the existing SFS from the disk, re-add it using L:SmartFileSystem, give it the same identifier as the partitions are using, and then it should find the filesystem and mount the partitions. I hope I got that right :roll:

--
moto

[amigagr]

don't use the identifier that hdtoolbox will give you by it self. use this: 0x53465300 and it would be ok.

[Hyperspeed]

I don't think I could live without DiskSalv... that's why I still use FFS over SFS.

I don't know why Angela Schmidt hasn't made RDB-Salv freeware now, it's not nice to keep this program restricted - it could save someone's life. She must have made enough money with MakeCD anyway!

I'm crossing my fingers for your idea motorollin!

[amigagr]

the HDToolbox is good enough for this job and it's ''free'' as it's part of the workbench tools, as for disksalv i never try a less usefull stuff (for me) in amiga as this.

[billt]

I once had a pretty bad situation like this. I had a 9gig drive, and didn't know that using full format above the 4gig line wsa a bad idea due to a bug. I did want to format an upper partition, but it looped around and wiped out the lower part of the drive including the RDB information.

I had originally laid out the particions with OS3.1, and my OS3.9 hdtoolbox on a bootable ZIP disk of course used different block size by default. Some fiddling around with a sector editor and a data recovery tool (don't remember the name, it wasn't disksalv but a newer one in an early-ish release) to figure out how file pointers were working to get clues of where the partition boundaries used to be. Couldn't quite get things working right with OS3.9 HDtoolbox, someone mentioned to try the OS3.1 version to get the smaller block size, which seemed to finally work out, and I was able to recover most stuff residing above where format cleaned the disk.

I don't remember how I did some of that anymore, but hopefully I won't have to ever again.

[Hyperspeed]

When it comes to backing up your hard disk I often hear of Emergency Boot diskettes, CD-ROMs, ZiP/Jazz disks but there's one thing I never hear mentioned...

Next time you're in the Early Startup Menu have a look for CC0: - a nice 2MB PCMCIA SRAM card would boot silently, instantly and would hold far more data for recovery purposes than an 880k floppy. You could put DiskSalv, SFS-salv, DOpus, AmiCDFS, RDB-Salv and whatever else on it.

Remember that CC0: has boot priority 3 - higher than floppy and hard disk and of course, unlike ZiP or CD-ROM the driver is permanently in ROM (which is thankfully write protected!).

:-)

[amigagr]

that's a good point, except that at least in my amigas floppy has boot priority 5

[Hyperspeed]

Oh yeah, you're right.

Well if DF0: has boot priority 5, and it's advised that DH0: be boot priority 4 - then CC0: on priority 3 will allow you to leave the SRAM card permanently in the PCMCIA slot without fear of booting off it.

Should your hard disk die it will be there like Superman to haul your ass out of trouble.

:-)