Volume DH0 not valildated

[Amiga4k]

This is going to take a bit more than usual to answer. Let's back track 10 years. You really need to know what you have inside the case for more helpful answers.

(1) Formatting the original drive: NO... NO... NO.... Unless you have all the Toaster software, and manuals.
(2) System specs has not been declared. I guess: an original A2000 Toaster, AmigaDOS 2.04 likely, and a SCSI card, likely an A2091. No CD-ROM drive.
(3) Hard drive is less than 2 gig.

DiskSalv and using a 3.5" disk cleaner package was excellent advice.

I have A2000 internal and external floppy drives. If you need another SCSI hard drive for the transfer, I also have a few under 2 gig that I would pre-format to your specs. Let's not keep kids in the dark without morning announcements.

[Thomas]

I don't understand why all people here give so complicated advice. The only thing one has to do if a drive is not validated is to wait. Wait for it to finish its own attempt to repair itself. Only if, really only if an error message appears you need to do your own recover actions.

Nobody here, especially not Heatdave mentioned an error message and what the message says. So either it is already ok now or it is still working. In the latter case, wait a little bit longer. It should not need more than five minutes, then the drive is ok again. Without any manual action. Just don't switch it off in the middle, because then it will start from the beginning again.

Regarding DiskSalv, it offers an option to repair the partition. But usually if you repair a partition, some file are lost. The first run of DiskSalv should always be Salvage in order to backup all files to another partition or another drive. Only if you are sure that all important files are saved, you should try the repair. Repair always has the usability of the partition as priority. Files which can only partially be repaired will deleted without the chance to get them back. Only Salvage has the priority to save all files, even those which are only partially available. This applies to all recovery tools. In-place repair is not a good choice when attempting to rescue important data.

Bye,
Thomas

[odin]

Well, waiting for the drive to validate itself doesn't always work. I've waited many a time in vain and I still had to resort to using DiskSalv to fix the partition.
-edit
By waiting I mean letting the Amiga validate during the night and seeing the thing still being busy the next morning..

[amigagr]

@Thomas: more or less you are right about validation but you are missing something here. the possibility that if he has workbench and rom 1.3, the disk validator handler file to be damege from the sadam virus that it was very famus at his time and the reason that they move the disk validator to the rom from workbench 2 and up. if this is the case, the validation can't be finish.

[Ilwrath]

Nobody here, especially not Heatdave mentioned an error message and what the message says. So either it is already ok now or it is still working. In the latter case, wait a little bit longer. It should not need more than five minutes, then the drive is ok again.

Of course, he said he got the error message "Volume DH0: not validated" in his original post...  Heck, it's in the title!  

He also said he was searching around for files to delete.  Therefore, it is fairly safe to assume he looked for more than 5 minutes.  Probably scratching his head for a matter of 30 minutes or more before starting off searching for help (while probably STILL leaving the machine running as he did.)

If the error is still there, it's probably a good time for DiskSalv....   :lol:

Only Salvage has the priority to save all files, even those which are only partially available.

I never understood this.  What good is a partial file, anyhow??  You're going to have to recover that file from backups one way or another.  Might just as well do it from the start.

I don't understand why all people here give so complicated advice.

We try to give concise and useful advice.  Something getting quite rare in the Amiga community, as well.

[spirantho]

To sum up, as I see it:

1) Boot the machine and wait until the hard drive light goes out. This may take a while.
2) Wait a bit longer.
3) Eventually the drive light will go out. If it doesn't, your HD is probably dead or dying and the machine is constantly trying to read a bad block. Time to get a new (second hand) HD.
4) If the drive light goes out with no notification, then it's validated. Yay! Now don't turn it off when a file is being written again, ok?
5) If it comes up and says "Read error on volume xxx:" or something then and only then is it time to worry about other software. I myself have had DiskSalv mess things up, so I use QBTools, but DiskSalv is usually ok if you're careful. Could some kind soul in the States stick a floppy with DiskSalv on into a Jiffy bag and mail him?

And don't worry about the 100% full bit, that's just because it's unvalidated.

[Thomas]

I never understood this. What good is a partial file, anyhow?? You're going to have to recover that file from backups one way or another. Might just as well do it from the start.

If you don't have a backup of an important file (e.g. because you were editing it right when the crash happened), then you are glad about any part which can be rescued.

However, "partially" in my post might not necessarily mean the data is only partially left but that perhaps there are some inconsistencies in the file system structure but the data is fully intact. FFS has many pointers between blocks. Salvage mode might be able to recover a file which cannot be repaired in-place.

Additionally Salvage mode does not alter the damaged partition. So even if DiskSalv fails to recover the file, you can try another program or even send the HDD to an expert who can write a program especially for your case.

Once you ran an in-place repair, the file system will be usable again, but files which are deleted during the repair are lost forever. There is no expert who can recover deleted files from a repaired file system structure.

I had cases where DiskSalv in repair mode cleared an entire partition, as if it was quick-formatted, while salvage mode was still able to recover most of the files.

Bye,
Thomas

[Amiga4k]

What is the present status on this problem?

[murple]

Sorry to dig up an old thread, but I figured itd be good to put it in the same place for anyone else with this issue who finds it in a search as I did.

I was installing the game Aqua from AmiNet on my A2000. Halfway through the first disk un-lha-ing, I got a guru meditation. After reboot (even after power cycles) I'm getting "disk not validated" on DH0: and I cant get it cleared up.

I tried running DiskSalv in Validate mode, and when it rebooted I got checkusm errors on a disk block, or the same validation errors in CLI. So, no change.

I'm trying it now in Repair mode.

As far as I know the drive is in good shape, so... I hope this works.

[murple]

@#&*@$&@! DiskSalv guru'd.

[Thomas]

It's probably not DiskSalv which caused the guru, but the HDD driver, because it happened with lha, too.

How big is the drive, where is it connected to and what are the versions of the operating system and the HDD driver ?

To get a good overview, please run check4gb and posts its output here.

Bye,
Thomas

[zipper]

I found DiskSalv 2 always very reliable (of course working under 4 GB) but the worst error I think needed 3 or 4 runs before solved. (not validated => error on block xx => block used twice error => out of range error => fixed; order of errors not necessarily this). Validate was mostly enough to get things fixed, but after I got fast enough drives and SCSI3, it was much easier and faster to copy the problematic partition to another and reformat and copy back.
 

[murple]

I'll have to run that when I'm home. The system was an ebay purchase, and is an Amiga 2500 with a GVP G-Force 030 Combo accelerator/SCSI card. It's running WB 3.1 with 3.1 ROMs. The hard drive is a 4GB split into 2 partitions and connected to the G-Force. There is a CDROM connected to the same SCSI.

I'd hate to wipe it since there's a ton of good software on it. I dont have an easy way to back it up either.

[jj]

If its only 4gb, a couple of cds or put a dvd burner in and back it up to dvd

[murple]

The only CD/DVD burners I have are IDE, and I dont have an IDE interface in my A2000. Probably the best I could do would be to dismantle the Amiga and take the drive out, find a SCSI card for my PC, and copy the files there. I could put a second hard drive in the Amiga and copy files there, but with all the disk validation/checksum errors I'm getting, I'm not sure that would work so great.

[pVC]

I always found ABTools making much better results on filesystem fixing than DiskSalv. And in sane time.