How to error check an Amiga disk?

[Medvind]

My question is, which is the best way to check if one of your Amiga disks is ok or not?

[thomas]

Copy all files to RAM. If it gives a read error, the disk is faulty.
Use DiskCopy to copy the disk to another disk, this will verify if every block on the disk can be read.
Get DiskSalv from Aminet, it can check and repair the disk. http://www.aminet.net/aminet.cgi?string=disksalv

However, if the disk is a game disk which does not contain AmigaDOS files, you should not let DiskSalv try to repair it, it will fail and mark the disk unusable.

[DrBong]

Originally Posted by bl4desinger/IND

My question is, which is the best way to check if one of your Amiga disks is ok or not?

I used to check floppy disks for errors using X-Copy back when I used them regularly. If you want to check individual files and directories for errors, then utilities like Check on Aminet might be useful, otherwise copying them to ram or HD is a quick & dirty way of finding out if errors are present on a disk.

[Medvind]

Yeah I used to check with X-Copy also. But even if the disk passes that test, can individual files still be damaged?

Seems like a tiresome task to copy files to RAM or HD to check if they're alright when it's about 20 disks I want to check. I'll be dumping them to ADF, thats why I want to make sure they're fine so that I don't spread faulty ADF's around.

I'll give DiskSalv a go and see what happens. But if the disks checks through with this, should I stop worrying then?

[IFW]

"Yeah I used to check with X-Copy also. But even if the disk passes that test, can individual files still be damaged?"

Yes, they could be. Especially since most copy programs simply fix the checksum on bad blocks. The original OFS system has hash values that will show you if that was the case, while copying the files. The later FFS has no such integrity info, to make the blocks fully utilised by data.

If you are talking about original game/application disks, not your own disks it is a very bad idea to run anything like disksalvage on them. Many early protections used on ados disks like HLS will show as a read error in one the files - that triggers the track length being checked in the protection code - and hence correcting the "bad" file will render the disk unusable.
Same goes for "virus killing" original games; a very bad practice.

[Medvind]

"Yes, they could be. Especially since most copy programs simply fix the checksum on bad blocks. The original OFS system has hash values that will show you if that was the case, while copying the files. The later FFS has no such integrity info, to make the blocks fully utilised by data."

Ok, so the best way is to copy the files over to the HD to see if they're ok? Very well then...

And this isn't any originals.

[IFW]

So far it seems.

[Overdoc]

I think Checkdisk function in X-Copy, as well as Doscopy doesn't correct any checksums.
Only Doscopy+ did that, afaik.

But anyway, your disks could already have been copied with Doscopy+ before and checksums could have been changed and so you won't notice any errors. You wouldn't even notice them by copying all the files ( as long as that is possible ? many games loaded sectors directly instead via filesystem )

[Medvind]

These disks I am dumping is old Swedish libs disks, with PD stuff and such on them. Most of them are original member disks so I think copying the files will be enough this time around. Although I've found two disks with sector errors