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!

[slayer]

I always got into the habit of writing down the details of partitions and associated information in a book for all my HDs. This really wasn't much use apart from being able to salvage the individual partitions later, the only sure way I suppose is to save the rdb information in a file. But who has the discipline to do these things as a natural course of action.

(Before you do the below you're going to have to unprep and reprep your HD)

In this situation what I would do is simply quick format the entire drive as one large partition, hopefully it was originally partitioned as per manufacturers specs otherwise that could introduce concerns about HD structure and set the correct filesystem on it too.

Then use DiskSalv to another HD with enough space for the process. It also has a guess Filesystem if you weren't sure about the filesystem and quick formatted it in something you guessed.

Too bad there wasn't a program that could find all the partitions then write all the information to the rdb.

Sorry this answer is somewhat vague and does rely on someone with ample knowledge of dos and workbench etc but like anything like this it takes far too much energy to write a thorough walkthrough, these days I normally say, this is too hands on to tackle

Perhaps someone can point you in a better direction

[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

[slayer]

But hey, you have a Blizzard 2060!

I only have 1 A1260 and 1 PPC 060 Blizzard

as for your rendition of Amiga reconstruction, I understand perfectly the procedures you are conveying

[Thomas]

I am dead tired of installing 3.1

You have a Deneb. You can boot from USB. You can boot from your backup.

And even if not, you could make a boot floppy with USB drivers which boots from your backup.

It's just a matter of putting the right files into the flash ROM or onto the floppy disk and to make a backup which can be booted (i.e. not an LhA archive or such, but a plain file copy).

[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.

[slayer]

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...

[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?

[slayer]

almost correct, 0 would only useful if you have a drive set at a negative value and you'd like to keep all nagative level drives from booting before it, of course it would work that way just seems strange to me ;-) , you usually increase the value to give a drive preference...

boot first 1
boot second or other units bootable but not given any preference 0

the floppy is hardwired 10 I believe

only time I use negative values is for the actual priority settings of tasks running in the AmigaOS useful when something that is running that HOGS the cpu... like fryingpan for example...

good luck with the HD endevours, I'm trying to wind down on a Friday afternoon, not that it's been very busy, just got back from home doing the dishes from last night lol

[bnice]

Hi, had a quick google this the program you seem to want is called rdb-salv here is a link to the demo http://us2.aminet.net/disk/salv/RDBSalv.lha . Don't know if you can still pay for the full version? Or what the limitations of the demo?

Good Luck,
Ben.

[bnice]

Ok there seems to quite a few RDB recovery programs found a lot here http://www3.uk.freebsd.org/disk/salv/ some look like they are completely free best of luck.

[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!

[slayer]

I knew of that program too but I didn't think there was any point since he overwrite the rdb not corrupted it - In my experience none of these programs ever do what you want them to do... in short, though none of us ever learn, the only safe way is to back it up a bit like custom bootblocks are to nondos floppy diskettes

@save2600

good to see you back on the road, wiser for it? ;-)