A1200 suddenly shows "df4:" and "Pc4:" and hd doesn't start anymore

[SimonV]

Last night I was trying to read some disks on my df1: drive connected to my a1200. Suddenly a DF4: showed up on the workbench ? I rebooted and now my harddisk doesn't boot anymore. The HD still shows up in hdtoolbox when I reboot from the 3.9 emergency disc but there it says it isn't partitioned.... anyone has an idea what happened ? Virus ?

Also that "df4:" did show up when I booted from the emergency disc ... I even didn't know an AMiga could have a df4: ? Also PC4: showed up the first time it occured.

Help ...

[Thomas]

The name DF4 is usually used for a floppy-like drive connected to another controller. For example a LS120 connected to the IDE bus or an USB floppy drive connected to USB.

If there is no DF4 and PC4 in Devs/DosDrivers, then some software has to run in the background which creates them, for example Poseidon. They are not created automatically by Kickstart (like DF0 ... DF3).

That the HDD appears as not partitioned can have several reasons which might or might not be related to the DF4 thing. As you didn't write anything about your Amiga, it is difficult to guess. I think the PowerFlyer (a.k.a. FastATA) firmware automatically mounts LS120 drives as DF4. So if you have a PowerFlyer and the HDD just died, the PF could erroneously identify the dead HDD as an LS120 drive.

If the HDD is bigger than 4GB it could also be that you just hadn't installed the required drivers to use big harddrives and now some write access to a partition outside of the first 4GB hit the partition table.

Edit: a virus could also be a reason. If it is intelligent enough to find the driver / unit of the boot drive but is too stupid to see that it's partitioned and them tries to overwrite the boot block, it would hit the partition table. We need to look at the contents of block 0 of the HDD to find out what happened. If it starts with "DOS", then some kind of bootblock (virus or something else) has been written to it. Having a valid boot block in block 0 of the HDD could also fool the HDD driver into thinking it sees a floppy disk (DF4).

[Thomas]

The more I think about it the more the "partition table overwritten by floppy bootblock" theory becomes the most plausible explanation.

Which program did you use to "read some disks on [your] df1: drive"? What did you specify as destination?

[SimonV]

Well that about not using upgraded devices with big harddrives isn't impossible either. I had 2 partitions with PFS3. 300Mb Workbench and 55GB Work. I had IDEFIX97 installed on the Workbench (altough when I enquire scsi.device version it seems to be still the same) and when I ran CheckWB it told me the big drive was "ok"

About the floppy reading. I was just trying to open it's ICON from WB. Strange thing was that DF4: still showed up when I booted from the OS3.9 emergency disc.

More details about my machine. A1200 with Blizzard 030 with SCSIkit and an external scandoubler. IDEFIX97 to get my telmex PCMCIA drive working. OS3.1 with MagicWB, Mui3.8, MultiCX, Swazinfo, MagicMenu and WBstartup+ and Newicons in C: run from the startupsequence without installing it so my system also shows NewIcons correctly with loosing the MagicWB

I guess I better make use of Blizzkick to upgrade the scsi.device and start all over again. Only pity I made a backup of my dh0: on to my dh1: ... wich is ofcours lost now.

[Thomas]

Where is the hdd connected to?

Why do you give up so early? There are ways to recover.

[SimonV]

The HD is connected to the internal A1200 IDE port. It's 2.5" 60GB harddrive.

I didn't know it was recoverable and I might be a little impatient ;-) . I was still in the process building up the Workbench so not too much really lost there.

I also used the original PFS3 released by the author on Aminet if that's important ? Not sure I already want put my time in versions that are altered afterwards by others.

So when I restart: I am probably better of making sure I have the upgraded scsi.device running out of OS3.9 ? I really don't want to run OS3.9 on my 50Mhz 68030 ... it feels so slow.

[Thomas]

IDEfix97 should do the job quite well. OS 3.9 does not help with PFS3.

Just make sure that C:IDEfix is run from startup-sequence or even better run it as C:LoadIDE RESET instead (read the comments which are added to startup-sequence after the installation of IDEfix).

[SimonV]

Then I really don't know what went wrong there. Idefix97 was installed with it's installer, but I think that one puts it in the user-startup ?

But how does 3.9 not help with PFS3 ? It does have the support for big partitions not ?

[Thomas]

They don't speak the same language: PFS3 uses TD64 and OS 3.9 introduces NSD.

You can use PFS3ds with OS 3.9, though.

It is support for large hard drives BTW, not for large partitions.

[SimonV]

I get really confused by this.

So a clean A1200 install with OS3.1 and PFS3 needs what to work correctly ?

When i install IDEfix97, I can't find a newer scsi.device anywhere and it still reports the old one when I query it.

[Thomas]

Edit s:startup-sequence. At the top you should find a section which looks like this:

Code: [Select]


;BEGIN IDEfix
If Exists C:IDEfix
   ; You may want to exchange the following line with LoadIDE reset quiet
   ; to make IDEfix reset resident, or LoadIDE start quiet
   ; to start IDEfix immediately and have it reset resident
   ; from the next reboot. Make sure to put LoadIDE behind any Kickstart mappers!
   C:IDEfix
EndIf
;END IDEfix


Change it to look like this:

Code: [Select]


;BEGIN IDEfix
C:LoadIDE RESET QUIET
;END IDEfix


Then reboot and check version of scsi.device again.

Note that with PFS3 you need to wait at least 5 seconds after the last disk access before you reboot, otherwise changed buffers will not be written to disk (and changes to startup-sequence will be lost).

[SimonV]

So if I understand well the absence of that line messed up my HD ?

[Thomas]

I don't know what led to your problem. You didn't allow me to look at block 0 of the HDD to see by what it had been overwritten.

[SimonV]

Well I suppose that using that old os3.1 scsi.device on 55Gb formatted disc wasn't a good start anyway. It's now up and running again with PFS3 partitions AND with that IDEfix scsi.device activated in the startup-sequence. And when it happens again I know who to contact now:-)

[SimonV]

And it happened again today ... I was just swapping some PCMCIA device and that started saying my CF0: was "not dos" .. wich it obviously is and again df4: shows up.

When I boot from my OS3.9 emergency  disc, hdtoolbox says the drive isn't installed and also df4: shows up... something that otherwise doesn't happen.

Now I am sure the scsi.device from IDEFIX97 was activated and also pfs3 can't be the problem ..I think.

So I guess the RDB is gone again ... but can I restore that without loosing my partitions ? ANd what is causing this in the first place ?