Re: Photdesk destroyed my ADFS partition! HELP!!!


"Theo Markettos" <theom+news@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> schreef in bericht
news:y0p*IEpHr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Manu T <manu-t@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I noticed the HD led lit when I changed resolution. But THAT shouldn't
be a
problem!

It might have been. My HD starting making scratching noises when I
switched
it on the other day, and the light was permanently on. I'm not sure how
general the principle is, but an continuously-active disc light may mean
the
drive has detect an error or is battling against one. It wasn't detected
by
the system when it was making scratching noises and was active, so
something
was seriously wrong.

No scratching noises at all. I re-initiallised the drive again and it
appears to be fine.

I've already tried these programs. So yes, I presume the partition table
is
already beyond repair. Then I tried the HDForm from my older Backup.
That
gave a "broken directory"error. Then I downloaded the " RISC OS 4
Default
Boot sequence CD ISO image" Tried the HDForm from that CD (the cd-drive
is
still functionable thank god), that went OK. Then coppied the whole CD
to
the HD to be able to boot (at last). But that gave an error "No support
for
RISCOS 4.30"...GRRRRRRRR!!!!! Damn you Paul Middleton... supply the
proper
things on your bloody RISCOS website!!!

I know it's a bit late now, but the first rule of data recovery is not to
try things if you don't know what you're doing. At the very least a
second
opinion will stop you doing something in the heat of the moment. In most
cases a drive that's switched off will not deteriorate, so switch it off
to
go and seek help. Don't switch it on again until you have a plan in
place.
You may have to act quickly... any delays increase the risk of the drive
failing catastrophically.

I bought these programs excactly to fix HD-problems. I know how to use
!Fixmap (Looksystems). I have rescued drives with it before. It appears that
with these new ADFS E-type discs none of these programs work.

The second rule is: harddrives are cheap. So if you need a working system
in the interim, go buy a spare and reinstall onto that.

The third rule is: if it's not mechanical failure, always work on a clone
of the disc and not the disc itself. There are tools for Windows, Linux
and
other systems (including ARM Linux) that will clone one disc onto another.
If at all possible, it's best to take an image from the suspect drive,
then
work on a backup of the image. If you mess up, you can always go back to
the first image.

All very well for "standard" filesystems like FAT, NTFS, Ext3 or even HFS.
I can retrieve data too with just a CD-rom and e.g. a knoppix live-linux,
but only on FAT and NTFS partitions. HFS+ (Apple) is more troublesome and
ADFS E-format is a complete disaster.

If it /is/ mechanical failure (any strange errors/noises/smells?) then
it's
a much more difficult area and worth asking for advice. All you need to
do
is be able to keep the drive running long enough to whip a disc image off
it, but frequently the drive won't be detected.

All the spare HDD's that I use for RISCOS get detected fine. One is the
original 210MB model however this one starts giving me read errors so it's
at the end of it's life. The problem with these large 80GB and more HDD's is
that many simply don't work in RPC's.

Nothing wrong with the connector to the drive and the CDrom drive. Both
are
IDE and both function fine. It's the bloody partition table that's gone!
Fecking ADFS! I thought Risc PC could withstand nuclear wars... it can't
even withstand a bloody bitmap editing program doing some fake virtual
memory thingy and a resolution switch!

I don't blame you for being frustrated, but it's difficult to suggest what
you can do now. You /may/ still be able to get at some files, but with
the
disc map and root directory gone it'll be a much harder job. It's also
bearing in mind that you /still/ quite possibly have a failing disc, and
so
any new files on it are still vulnerable.

I've calmed down now. I could retrieve some files from an old backup (not as
old as 1999 but still too old)

FWIW the drive I have that went down dated from 1998 and was 6GB. I have
backups, but I did manage to recover everything from it with prompt action
(the 'fridge for 20 mins' trick worked).

IF I keep using Prophet (VERY doubtfull now) then I'm gonna run it under
emulation. At least with a PC or Mac you can have EASY backups on DVD.
On
RISCOS it's always a drag to do anything. No support for anything execpt
jpegs, it's goddamn slow (all I see is that blue hourglass and you can
only
guess what the stupid machine is actually doing) and even the tinniest
thing
costs money.

If your drive dated from 1999 it can't have been very large. I do network
backups: several snapshots of 6GB barely even touch the 120GB capacity of
my
backup drive. You could have fitted an extra hard drive to your RPC and
done nightly backups without much hassle. It wouldn't have protected
against, say, lightning, but is better than no backups. A removable HD
(parallel port or Castle USB, say) would be better.

The internal drive that I placed inside the RPC is 2.5GB. I have another on
3.5GB and the original 210MB. Plus some CD's dated from early 1999 to end of
1999. Plus a bunch of useless floppy discs with backup-files spread over the
whole bunch but with failing discs.

Theo

My problem now is finding a !Boot that doesn't complain with "Support for
RISC OS version 4.30 is missing -reinstall !Boot"

'Thanks for not patronisingme.


.

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