Problem restoring RDB with HDToolbox

[macce2]

Hello,



I have a HP 72 Gb Scsi hard drive that I have used with my A4000;
but I did accidentally lose the partitions (filesystem pfs_aio);
and when I tried to restore them with the Rdb backup file
that I had made with HDToolbox (os3.9 version) earlier,
it didn't succeed.
I got the message: "error 224 reading drive description".
If I try to start partitioning of the drive,
all the memory available (almost 300 mb man)
gets used and then the machine eventually crashes.


I'm pretty sure that the Rdb file backup I have made

earlier is correct, because I had tested it to work before.


I was starting to lose my hope with the drive/system;
but I decided to do some investigating,
and downloaded a couple of apps from AmiNet.
If I run the app SCSIdevs and give the needed parameters
(z3scsi.device; using Fastlane card),
I get valid information of the lost partitions on the drive,
although they can't be directly seen / accessed.
So, what should I do next, to try to restore
those lost partitions

(and a considerable amount of more or less important data!) ?

[Nor Bert]

First I would make a disk image (if there is something important)
Then, on a copy of that image under WINUAE, I would upload a copy of the RDB and see if the partitions (files) are visible.

After using the RDB copy, under HDToolbox you will have a preview of the partition layout (size) and you can compare if it agrees with what you remember

If everything agrees, you can manually enter the parameters for the SCSI drive on the A4000 into HDtoolbox. The data should be visible.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

I on my A4000 several times recovered partitions and data, of course you have to work on a copy ! or do it when no attempt worked.

The procedure was to delete all partitions and then recreate them "equal size", if you miss by a few bytes the partitions with the data will not come back.

[macce2]

Thank you for your reply, Nor Bert!
Generally, that would be a good idea,
but the problem is that I have no Windows system at all; only older Linux laptop.
Of course, I could try the UAE with it;but Im afraid that the configuration in Linux would be somewhat tricky. Additionally, I do suspect that the Linux version of UAE wouldn't be so "complete" as the WinUAE is nowadays; but please correct me if Im wrong with this.
Maybe I could upload the Rdb file to the Zone, maybe someone could kindly try it ?!

[macce2]

Originally Posted by AMIGASYSTEM

I on my A4000 several times recovered partitions and data, of course you have to work on a copy ! or do it when no attempt worked.

The procedure was to delete all partitions and then recreate them "equal size", if you miss by a few bytes the partitions with the data will not come back.

Thank you for your reply.
Honestly, I thought there must be some
other approach I might prefer.
On a real Amiga, even with my current, relatively capable A4000 setup (060@50; 300 Mb total Ram) making an image of the whole 70 Gb drive would be practically impossible.
I mean that because I didn't do a separate backup of all those cylinders etc parameters;
I'd rather not re-partition my drive before Im totally sure that the data couldn't be restored (at normal circumstances).

[thomas]

This program could be able to restore the backup: http://thomas-rapp.homepage.t-online.../rdbrecov2.lha

I am not absolutely sure if I ever tested it with a HDToolbox backup. If it does not work, please send me the backup.

[macce2]

A thousand thanks, thomas,
You saved my bacon and my whole Christmas time !
If you hadn't written your reply and given
the link to RDBRecov2, I had propably
ended up doing something desperate
and possibly lost all the data.

There was some additional, unwanted
partitions there which I decided to remove;
then I wrote the corrected Rdb to the drive,
after making the backup files (old Rdb,
mountfile & mountilst).
That was a success; but the partitions
had to be renamed and for example,
the bootable flag of the system partition
re-set.
Overall; the main reason for all this mess
has to be my recent try to remove a couple of
unused partitions "from the middle " of the drive
/partitioning:

Originally, the disk was partitioned to about
ten (!) partitions, one of them being
a system backup partition.
I had used & filled most of the partitions
to a certain degree; then got the idea
that I'b better try to enlarge the first
three or four partitions.
So I cleaned two partitions from the middle
of the drive, removed them and
planned to replace that freeing(?)
space with a one larger partition;
to be used as a temporary storage partition
before modifying the first ones;
but that didn't work as expected.
So, I'll end up doing a question :
Is it possible to somehow join
two (or even more?!?) partitions
that use the pfs_aio filesystem ...!?!?

[thomas]

You can merge the space of multiple partitions into one larger partition, but you cannot keep the data. Each partition you change will become NDOS and needs quick-formatting.

If for example you have DH0, DH1, DH2, DH3 and DH4 you can delete DH2 and DH3 and increase the size of DH1 to cover the whole free space. But then DH1 will need quick-format. DH0 and DH4 should stay in place if you don't touch them.

There are a few things you can change without data loss: the name of the partition, the number of buffers, the bootable flag, boot priority, Mask and MaxTransfer. Everything else will make the partition unreadable.