Amiga 1000 SCSI drive error just now...

[blakespot]

I have an A1000 booting KS 1.3 and WB 1.3 off floppy, handing boot sequence off to an attached SCSI HD. It's been working fine for a good while.

I was just downloading some data via serial link when the system Guru'ed and rebooted. Now when it comes up I get this:

(attached)

Retry does not help. What's happened here? Thanks.



bp

[blakespot]

If I hit Cancel, then things boot on to the Workbench, no more errors -- apparently ok...


bp

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Is the error coming from the floppy disk, or after it's handed off the boot sequence to the HD?  In either case I'd be concerned that your drive may be starting to fail, or might've been in the state of writing data to the drive during the Guru, so you've got some corrupt data on there.  Not sure what disk checking applications work under 1.3... Um, DiskDoctor?  :-/

[Steady]

Shouldn't the Disk-Validator sort it out if you leave it for a while?
When you run the info command in the Shell, does it give a status of validating?

You can try an older version of Dave Haynie's DiskSalv (1.x) to sort it out. It can be found on fish disks, but can't remember which one right now. Kingfisher can help you find the one.

[Steady]

Actually, that error is probably coming from Disk-Validator so it might be stuck. Definitely try DiskSalv.

[zipper]

Disksalv v1.42 is on http://main.aminet.net/pub/aminet/misc/fish/fish-0251.lha
I used it with success on 1.3.

[blakespot]

Is the error coming from the floppy disk, or after it's handed off the boot sequence to the HD?  In either case I'd be concerned that your drive may be starting to fail, or might've been in the state of writing data to the drive during the Guru, so you've got some corrupt data on there.  Not sure what disk checking applications work under 1.3... Um, DiskDoctor?  :-/

The error is definitely after the HD has taken over. Not a floppy issue.

I've had Amigas with HDs for years, never had a drive go south due to a guru during a write. Is that a somewhat common thing? The drive in question is a pretty old 40MB Quantum SCSI disk, but a straight up semi failure of the physical disk coincidental with a guru during a write seems...coincidental. Dunno.



bp

[blakespot]

Ok, I grabbed DiskSalv 1.42 - thanks.

It wants a source and a destination... So, I need to have a 2nd HD of >= size mounted to use DiskSalv, I guess? Is that right?

BTW any attempt to write on the disk results in an AmigaDOS message : Disk is not validated.

Is there a program out there that scans a drive for physical errors? To determine if a reformat of this disk would be a good route?

Also - if I need to replace the disk, what are the physical size constraints on AmigaDOS 1.3? I have a 40MB disk in there now and it's nowhere near full, just FYI.

Thanks.


bp

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Just a quick thought, if you haven't done this already I'd back up right away any data you might have on that old 40MB drive.  Good luck!

Also - maybe pull the drive and connect it to one of your other Amiga's, and then run DiskSalv on it that way?

Edit 2: size limitations are probably going to be more of an issue with the firmware of your drive controller, rather than the OS.  Assuming you're not going to stick a >4GB drive on an OS 1.3 machine, haha.  

[Zac67]

If a write gets interrupted (power loss, guru, reboot) the filesystem is flagged as dirty. On the next bootup it'll get validated which may fail (as in your case apparently) and leaves you to the mercy of disksalv (or possibly some other tool revalidating the disk). I'd recommend backing up the partition and then trying disksalv. If all fails you may need to reformat and restore from backup.

More advanced filesystems don't have this weakness but Kick 1.3 probably limits the options...

[klx300r]

@ blakespot

I remember using QuarterBack Deluxe to solve a boot up problem with my external scsi drive under kick/WB 1.3

[blakespot]

It seems crazy.

So -- a guru during a write can cause a disk to be come unvalidated. And in order to fix it (well, with DiskSalv), you need a 2nd hard drive or partition of >= size on-hand? I ran 1.3 with a HD on my old A2000 back in the '90s for a year and a half and that never happened - just had one HD, partition -- luck I guess?

I know more recent AmigaDOS versions auto-revaldiate on boot. But, in order to use and enjoy this Amiga 1000 with 1.3 and a HD, I necessarily need to have a 2nd volume on hand to handle these incidents? Is that the reality?

Re: The QuarterBack tip --- does that also need a 2nd volume on-hand? (Which I do not have)

Thanks.




bp

[zipper]

Fixdisk v1.2 is able to handle partitions upto 48 MB and it might be able to do a fix - in - place but a 2nd volume and Disksalv is highly recommended.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I'm thinking the tool you're using can't validate the drive that it itself is stored on.  Sort of like if you store the repair tool on Foo: it can't validate Foo:, you need to store it on Foo2: .    Maybe I missed it but have you tried creating a "recovery" boot disk floppy, with just enough gubbins to load the OS and the recovery tool, and run it off the floppy?  Just a wild guess there, probably still better to perform the validation in another Miggy.

Damned Amiga hard disk validation errors, 10 years ago I blew up my A1200 that way, which had years of custom configuration work done on it, when some disk operation created a recursive listing, sort of like Stuff:stuff\, Stuff:stuff\stuff, Stuff:stuff\stuff\stuff... etc., it got so deep that when it tried to reboot and validate itself it just guru'd.  If I'd only had another Amiga on-hand to validate it with, I probably wouldn't have left the Amiga scene for 10 years!  :p

Edit: sorry if this seems obvious why we keep suggesting it, but your signature does list an A1000, A2000, and A1200 - surely one of those can act as a host to perform the validation??

[Zac67]

So -- a guru during a write can cause a disk to be come unvalidated. And in order to fix it (well, with DiskSalv), you need a 2nd hard drive or partition of >= size on-hand?

Worst case - yes.

I know more recent AmigaDOS versions auto-revaldiate on boot.

All do, but there are problems the autovalidation fails to fix.

Quarterback Tools have worked pretty nicely for me - but there is some risk involved and precious data should be backed up (anyway).

In these days where HDDs <1 gig are considered tiny and can be had for (next to) nothing there's no real excuse for not backing up...