Help recovering source code file!!!
 

So the past few months I've been slowly finishing a serialization library that would be very useful and that was actually the biggest stumbling block on 2 or 3 projects that I've never finished and that were started about 10 years ago. I was using WinUAE and some old version of CED. Today I went to open the source code file and although it reports it's size normally when opening the icon information the file is completely empty:shocked. I was cautious to not save over it. Decided to open it with Filex and surprisingly same result! It seems to be some problem with the file system.
So is it ok if use something like QuarterBackTools or some other recover software (which would you recommend for this case ?) with a WinUAE HDD disk file ?
Not all is lost, I made a back up that covers about 98% of it about 3 weeks ago and I only did a couple of hours per week, still going back is a PITA, as I mentally don't remember what was already done and not at that time, so would have to study that part of the code I was about to finish and probably redo it from scratch. It's also a very complicated piece of code this part...
:crying

you can try Disksalv in Salvage mode. once the scan is finished, you select all files on the left side
(3rd icon in the middle, from buttom to top) - choose a target - of course a different medium than the scanned one.
Salvage mode does not write/manipulate on the source device, just reads what it finds and puts it onto the target device.
so create another hdd for the target.
I hope it works for you.

Long time ago I switched to free, FAST and reliable Smart File System to avoid those kind of horrible situations.
I have SmartFilesystem 1.279 (23.12.2007) AmigaOS m68k (c) Joerg Strohmayer.
Works absolutely fine with WinUAE HD files.

Quarterback Tools was one of the best recover tools on the Amiga FFS AFAICR.

YESSSSS!!!!!
Thanks to all for all the replies, it's now recovred.
I used DiskSalv, already had it installed. I only had old FFS anyway..
Already made more back copies.

Wow these things are creepy, but the recovery was quite straightforward.

Now back to coding :) One day, one day I'll finish some of my Amiga projects :)
Cheers guys

P.S.
I hadn't logged in in a while and nice to see many of the "old" users again still active and helpful. We'll be back!

Try to switch to SFS: much faster, better, reliable.

If you want data safety you should stick with FFS. Every file system can get corrupted every now an then. As you experienced, FFS has many well working recovery tools.

SFS has only one. And if does not work.

PFS has none. It only has repair tools. Repair tools will delete corrupted files.

So if you don't want to make regular backups, FFS gives you the most safe data storage. With SFS and PFS you might loose everything at once.

Strange point of view: I use SFS since 20+ years (switched also to WinUAE with SFS). It's one of the safest fs around. Never had a corrupted file. It's also MUCH faster (even if you just open a drawer you'll notice this), and has many other technical enhancements compared to FFS.
With FFS I've had problems instead as almost all Amiga users, corrupt files and dir structure.

There's a reason why there is no need of many recover tools on SFS :agree
In short: PREVENT problems, it's a better philosophy.

SFS brought me corruption, that's the reason why i use now since a while PFS3 AIO (supported by Toni Wilen).

SFS is buggy, and when it fails, it FAILS !

I am not "really" supporting PFS3. You won't get help if it destroys all your files. (and pfsdoctor won't find them).

But technically FFS is the safest, it is nearly impossible to make it too badly corrupted. (without help from >4G wraparound which will really destroy data)

It is known that some SFS version can get corrupted randomly (I got it twice in late 1990s) and there is no way to fix it without copy and reformat. Unfortunately no one knows which version(s).

Always when recovering data: take full disk image backup first! (Very easy and quick today, nearly impossible back in the day..)

Using SFS 1.279 (Aminet has 1.277, I've included download link in the message above) since was out in 2007 and never had a single case of corruption up till now with WinUAE (it's perfect to create .VHD dynamically sized HD-files in WinUAE). And is very faaaast...
Consider also modern HD/SSD have much better technology, so in the past I can't exclude issues were more frequent with every fs also because of the HW per se.

I've found it's currently hosted on SourceForge BTW: https://sourceforge.net/projects/smartfilesystem/ but I'm not sure is up to date.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_File_System

SFS is great for developers since it also offers a primitive source code repository system. Every time you overwrite a source file, a number of old versions are kept in :.recycled .

PFS3 has deldir (which is not enabled by default)

I stopped caring about SFS when DirectSCSI was dropped. It become useless for me.

Would be great if someone would continue its development... :(
Joerg Strohmayer vanished...

Wait! Didn't notice your name Toni in PFS3 :)