Recover files from CF card

[Sim085]

Hello,

Is there a way how I can recover my files from a CF card?

I do not know exactly what happened. I had my A500+ setup on a CF card. I bought a 40pin to 44pin cable and 44pin CF card adapter. I must have connected something wrong as WinUAE (not original A500+) will not boot from the CF card. It is as if it is not there.

Windows can see the CF card (from Disk Manager) so I selected the option add partition (but not format) and try to use a Windows Recovery tools but this did not return the files I was expecting.

Does anyone know how I can recover the files?

I was thinking to format the CF card from WinUAE using HDToolBox and then using DiskSalv ... however I do not know if anyone has any better solutions.

[mark_k]

So you were using the CF card with your real A500+? How did you have it connected to the A500+?

And how did you connect the CF to your PC? A USB card reader would probably be best for that.

I don't mean to be rude, but it doesn't sound like you know what you're doing when it comes to data recovery. Don't try anything else otherwise you may make things worse.

Using Windows file recovery software won't work, and by adding a partition in Windows you probably overwrote the Amiga RDB which will make recovery more difficult.

Hi Sim,

If your CF card is connected to your PC and it can be discovered by your PC. Then you have a chance to find the files back. Just follow the steps in this guide:
http://www.aolor.com/data-recovery/user-guide.html
It helped me in recovering 500+ deleted photos on my SD card of my camera a week ago.

Do not try to write new files to the CF card to avoid old files being overwritten.

[Sim085]

Originally Posted by mark_k

So you were using the CF card with your real A500+? How did you have it connected to the A500+?

Yes this used to work without any issue. I have a GrandSlam drive with a SCSI to IDE convertor.

Originally Posted by mark_k

And how did you connect the CF to your PC? A USB card reader would probably be best for that.

This is where I think I broke it. I got a new 44pin to 40pin cable. Here is the link: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Laptop-2-5...E:L:OC:US:3160

I must have either (a) connected the cable the other way round, or (b) should have connected the power cord as the light on the CF card reader lit red all the time and did not boot.

Originally Posted by mark_k

I don't mean to be rude, but it doesn't sound like you know what you're doing when it comes to data recovery. Don't try anything else otherwise you may make things worse.

Using Windows file recovery software won't work, and by adding a partition in Windows you probably overwrote the Amiga RDB which will make recovery more difficult.

The CF card is recognised from Windows7. I did not format. I simply right click on it and add the option "New Simple Volume". I did not select the option to format however.

I tried a recover tool on the CF card and this did manage to find files but strange enough not my amiga stuff.

[mark_k]

By creating a new volume Windows would have written a PC MBR (master boot record) to the CF card. That may have overwritten the existing Amiga RDB.

Before doing anything else you should create an image file of the entire CF card. That way you will at least have a copy of all your data if you screw up again. :-)

You might be able to use WinUAE to do that.

After creating the image file, I would try to reconstruct the Amiga partition layout then use a program like DiskSalv to attempt to recover the files. At this point most of the file data is probably intact so with luck recovery should be pretty successful.

I suggest you get a USB card reader for your PC. Connecting the CF card to an IDE port requires that you power off the PC before inserting or removing the card which is not very convenient.

[Sim085]

That gives me hope! I had partitioned it into two parts, one for System: and the other one for Documents: When I re-partition now (after I do a copy), should I re-partition the same way or I can just create one large partition? All I care at this point is to get some files back.

WinUAE has an option "Create hard disk image file"... is that the option I must use?

Originally Posted by mark_k

By creating a new volume Windows would have written a PC MBR (master boot record) to the CF card. That may have overwritten the existing Amiga RDB.

Before doing anything else you should create an image file of the entire CF card. That way you will at least have a copy of all your data if you screw up again. :-)

You might be able to use WinUAE to do that.

After creating the image file, I would try to reconstruct the Amiga partition layout then use a program like DiskSalv to attempt to recover the files. At this point most of the file data is probably intact so with luck recovery should be pretty successful.

I suggest you get a USB card reader for your PC. Connecting the CF card to an IDE port requires that you power off the PC before inserting or removing the card which is not very convenient.

[thomas]

You have to repartition exactly the same way as before. Each partition must begin and end at exactly the same cylinder as it did before and you have to use exactly the same values for blocks per cylinder, file system and file system block size.

I would suggest to use a program which can search for orphaned partitions and tell you the values to use, like http://thomas-rapp.homepage.t-online...s/rdbrecov.lha

Using DiskSalv should not be needed if you create partitions correctly.

[mark_k]

Originally Posted by Sim085

That gives me hope! I had partitioned it into two parts, one for System: and the other one for Documents: When I re-partition now (after I do a copy), should I re-partition the same way or I can just create one large partition? All I care at this point is to get some files back.

WinUAE has an option "Create hard disk image file"... is that the option I must use?

Yes that should be the option to use. Make sure you keep that file safe, maybe burn it to a DVD or something.

As Thomas said, if re-partitioning it needs to be done exactly the same way. If, once you have created an image file from the card, you upload the first 32KB (say), it may be possible to determine by examining that what your previous partition layout was.

[thomas]

Originally Posted by mark_k

As Thomas said, if re-partitioning it needs to be done exactly the same way. If, once you have created an image file from the card, you upload the first 32KB (say), it may be possible to determine by examining that what your previous partition layout was.

Yes, this is true. Creating a partition with Windows only overwrites the very first block of the disk. For the Amiga partition table this is only the root block which contains information about the harddisk and links all other blocks. If the remaining blocks of the partition table are still intact, it is rather easy to recreate the RDB.

I just remembered that I once wrote a program which does this for you. Find it attached.

- run WinUAE and select the expanded config from the quickstart menu
- go to harddrives and use "Add Harddrive" to add your CF card
- use "Add Directory or Archive" to add the RecoRDB.lha archive
- click on Start

an AmigaDOS prompt reading 1> should appear. At the prompt enter

recordb uaehf.device 0

it will examine the disk and print a report about what it found. If you like what you see enter

recordb uaehf.device 0 rebuild

this will now save the new RDB to the disk. If you reboot the Amiga after that it should try to boot from the CF card.


Here is the original (German) post about it: http://www.a1k.org/forum/showpost.ph...7&postcount=22

[Sim085]

Hello thomas and thank you for the advice and downloads. I was wondering, if I do as mark_k suggested, and I created an image of the CF card, then can I follow your steps on that image? and then if it works I try on the CF card?

Also, the CF card did not stop working after I selected "New Volume" from Windows7. I did that to try and recover the files. It seems to have stopped working (not want to boot up) after I connected it in some wrong way with the IDE port.

Will try your steps and post how it goes!

Thanks again.

Originally Posted by thomas

this will now save the new RDB to the disk. If you reboot the Amiga after that it should try to boot from the CF card.

[thomas]

Originally Posted by Sim085

Hello thomas and thank you for the advice and downloads. I was wondering, if I do as mark_k suggested, and I created an image of the CF card, then can I follow your steps on that image? and then if it works I try on the CF card?

Yes, you can try it with the image (or a copy of the image) first and if it works use the CF card.

Also, the CF card did not stop working after I selected "New Volume" from Windows7. I did that to try and recover the files. It seems to have stopped working (not want to boot up) after I connected it in some wrong way with the IDE port.

I can only say that I often conntected the IDE cable wrongly in my A4000 in the past and it never did any harm. But this was the A4000 IDE controller and a real HDD, not a CF card on an adapter.

You say that you didn't connect the power leads on the 44->40 pin adapter. That's good because connecting the 44 pin plug the wrong way with power connected will surely destroy something.

Because the CF card still works on your PC, there's hope that the data is still there.

[Sim085]

I am trying this on an image of the CF card.

When I enter the command recordb uaehf.device 1 I get the following:

RDSK in block 0
...Vendor: SanDisk
...Product: SDCFH2-2048
...Revision: 
...Cylinders: 992
...Heads: 1
...Sectors: 4033
...First BADB in block -1
...First PART in block 1
...First FSHD in block -1
PART in block 1
...Name:  SDH0
...Blocks per Track: 4033
...Heads: 1
...Low Cylinder: 2
...High Cylinder: 991
...Dos Type: 0x444F5303
...Block Size: 512
...Boot Pri: 0
...Next PART in block -1
highest used rigid disk block is 20

I then entered the command recordb uaehf.device 1 rebuild and got the following output:

New RDSK successfully written

Then I restart WinUAW, remove RecorRDB.LHA from the list of drives and start. However I get the following error message:

Not a DOS disk
in device SDH0

Am I doing something wrong?

Note: I entered "recordb uaehf.device 1" instead of "recordb uaehf.device 0" because with 0 it was giving me an error that "cannot open uaehf.device unit 0"
EDIT: Before I had two partitions on the CF card; System: and Documents: (I do not remeber their exact size although most probably I divided into two or 3/4 - 1/4).

Originally Posted by thomas

- run WinUAE and select the expanded config from the quickstart menu
- go to harddrives and use "Add Harddrive" to add your CF card
- use "Add Directory or Archive" to add the RecoRDB.lha archive
- click on Start

an AmigaDOS prompt reading 1> should appear. At the prompt enter

recordb uaehf.device 0

it will examine the disk and print a report about what it found. If you like what you see enter

recordb uaehf.device 0 rebuild

this will now save the new RDB to the disk. If you reboot the Amiga after that it should try to boot from the CF card.

[mark_k]

What version of Kickstart are you using with WinUAE? Kickstart 2.04 (v37.175) and later should know about DOS\3 (international FFS) partitions.

Was the SDH0 partition previously bootable on your A500+? It might have got corrupted somehow.

Try booting from a Workbench disk and run a program like DiskSalv to see whether that can detect any files in the SDH0 partition. If it can, create a new HDF or configure a shared folder drive in WinUAE, then salvage/recover all the files from the CF image to there.

[Sim085]

Originally Posted by mark_k

What version of Kickstart are you using with WinUAE? Kickstart 2.04 (v37.175) and later should know about DOS\3 (international FFS) partitions.

Kickstart 3.1

Originally Posted by mark_k

Was the SDH0 partition previously bootable on your A500+? It might have got corrupted somehow.

I had partitioned the CF card in two; System: and Documents: Before I used to boot from the CF card so I would assume that SDH0 was bootable.

Shouldn't I also have an SDH1?

Originally Posted by mark_k

Try booting from a Workbench disk and run a program like DiskSalv to see whether that can detect any files in the SDH0 partition. If it can, create a new HDF or configure a shared folder drive in WinUAE, then salvage/recover all the files from the CF image to there.

Will try that.

[thomas]

What you see is not the RDB the Amiga used. This RDB was not damaged and it did not need the RecoRDB program. It's probably a relict of the time long ago when you first tried to make a bootable CF card with WinUAE.

Your mistake was to create a Windows volume on the card. Now WinUAE only sees the volume and not the actual begin of the card. Usually one would now use DiskPart CLEAN to remove the volume and repartition the CF card with WinUAE. But this will also delete the relevant information to recover the data.

I fear you have to do further recovery actions on the Amiga. You should repair your Amiga hardware so that it recognises the CF card again. Or get an Amiga with USB and use the USB card reader. That's what I did today and worked perfectly. After that WinUAE was able to see the entire card again, too.

You should *not* run DiskSalv on the wrong SDH0 partition!! Be warned, don't dare to use the repair function of DiskSalv. You might try the salvage option and copy found files to another storage medium. But don't be too happy if it finds some files. First check the contents of the files, they might contain completely different things than the file names suggest.

[Sim085]

Originally Posted by thomas

I fear you have to do further recovery actions on the Amiga. You should repair your Amiga hardware so that it recognises the CF card again. Or get an Amiga with USB and use the USB card reader. That's what I did today and worked perfectly. After that WinUAE was able to see the entire card again, too.

My Amiga hardware works fine. I have a GrandSlam which if I want can connect two hard disks, an old SCSI hard disk with Workbench 2.x installed and the CF card (through a SCSI to IDE convertor).

What should I do after I connect the CF card to the Amiga (A500+)?

[thomas]

Run RecoRDB again. Make sure to point it to the CF card and not to the SCSI hard disk.

[mark_k]

Originally Posted by Sim085

I had partitioned the CF card in two; System: and Documents: Before I used to boot from the CF card so I would assume that SDH0 was bootable.

Shouldn't I also have an SDH1?

Something has gone wrong. The RDB information you pasted above shows a single partition that occupies almost the entire card. As Thomas said that may be a remnant of a previous partition setup you had. Either way, writing that bogus single-partition layout to the RDB won't help at all.

What I would do now, is create another image file of the entire CF card (since you modified the one you created before). Burn it to a DVD or something, to make sure you always have an intact/unchanged backup copy to go back to. Copy that image file and work on the second copy.

Even with no old RDB information at all, it should be possible to reconstruct the former partition layout exactly. By scanning the image file for the FFS root blocks and DOS signatures it should be possible to figure out the exact former partition layout. Then you could extract the individual partitions into separate image files and mount them in WinUAE directly. Or write the correct RDB back to your working-copy image file and hopefully both partitions' files will be accessible.

[Sim085]

Originally Posted by thomas

Run RecoRDB again. Make sure to point it to the CF card and not to the SCSI hard disk.

So you mean,

1. Extract the contents of RecoRDB.lha
2. Copy this to the SCSI hard disk
3. Run recordb scsi.device 1

?

if yes, is scsi.device correct?

[thomas]

Originally Posted by mark_k

What I would do now, is create another image file of the entire CF card (since you modified the one you created before).

Yes, but don't use WinUAE for that. Use a program which sees the entire card and not only part of it.