Partition on CF hard drive now showing NDOS

[rabidgerry]

Hello,

earlier this afternoon I turned my A1200 on to find my dh3 partition was showing as ndos. I's not a fresh install or anything it's my main CF card that I use.

I wonder is this possible to save it?

I already tried Disksalv and I haven't clue what it spent half an hour creating as it didn't look at all like anything I saved on dh3.

Also took this hddreport (see attached).

The CF hard drive is PFS3-AIO formatted and is under 3gb. I have backup but they aren't super up to date. Worst case scenario I can use them but I would like to see if I can salvage the state the partition was in this morning before it died this afternoon.

Any help or advice is appreciated.

[Nor Bert]

Make an image of the CF card.
One as a backup, and on the other you will perform data recovery on the winuae emulator.
Try:
- PFSdoctor
- a quick format and PFSdoctor again


You do everything on the CF card image.

[Snoopy1234]

I have a dh2: partition that occassonally shows as NDOS:. OS 3.9, it's something to do with scsi.device in devs: not patching the rom via setpatch in the startup-sequence. To use pfs3 I believe scsi.device 43.46 is stable.

[rabidgerry]

Originally Posted by Nor Bert

Make an image of the CF card.
One as a backup, and on the other you will perform data recovery on the winuae emulator.
Try:
- PFSdoctor
- a quick format and PFSdoctor again


You do everything on the CF card image.

I used to have this, but misplaced it. So I tried to look for it again and download and everytime I download something there is no interface, just a file saying pfsdoctor and trying to run in shell does nothing as I get "not executable" message.

Originally Posted by Snoopy1234

I have a dh2: partition that occassonally shows as NDOS:. OS 3.9, it's something to do with scsi.device in devs: not patching the rom via setpatch in the startup-sequence. To use pfs3 I believe scsi.device 43.46 is stable.

The scsi device I'm using is 43.45, I never knew about 43.46.

[Snoopy1234]

Originally Posted by rabidgerry

The scsi device I'm using is 43.45, I never knew about 43.46.

Should be fine. If I had an early version it would fail to recognise PFS3 patitions because it wasn't formatted with the WB Format option.

[rabidgerry]

Anyone know what commands to try with PFSdoctor?

I ran it from the old PFSdoctor I found on my CF card, just swapped the file around so the icon wouldn't open the newer PFSdoctor. Anyways it opens a shell, I typed this:

check device dh3:

it just comes back saying "cannot find device exiting"

same thing if I type repair device dh3:

[supaduper]

example:
pfsdoctor DHO CHECK

Do not use the : after the Partition name as it will not run

The commands are INFO CHECK REPAIR SEARCH UNFORMAT

[rabidgerry]

Managed to get it to run and use basic command like repair, But either it was f*%ked already or running PFSDoctor old version wrecked it. So absolutley nothing happened with the partition after running the new version of PFSdoctor, it did some things thing quit. Didn't fix anyways. Then tried PFSsalv2. Also nothing.

Accepted defeat here and reformatted the partition again. Starting to put it back together from old backups. Some how the partition is reporting more space than before. Anyone know how long it takes before a CF card becomes knackered?

[rabidgerry]

Same shit happened again

[derSammler]

You should have used pfssalv2 instead, which, unlike pfsdoctor, does not mess with the drive you want to fix. It will only read from it and save whatever is salvageable to a different partition. Rule number one for any data recovery: never ever do *any* writes to the drives you want to rescue data from.

But yes, PFS seems to act this way from time to time. There are plenty of reports by other people suffering from exactly the same issue. Mass-deleting seems to be one cause for it to happen.

[rabidgerry]

Well I originally just reformatted and then dumped everything back in again from a backup. Currently as we speak PFSDoctor is doing a check and it says it is searching for a misplaced rootblock. As it's a 3gb partition I imagine this will take a while.

May be I could use PFSSALV2 after?

I'm not sure I have that. I'll need to check.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by derSammler

But yes, PFS seems to act this way from time to time. There are plenty of reports by other people suffering from exactly the same issue. Mass-deleting seems to be one cause for it to happen.

This is different. "mass-deletion bug" is fixed in pfs3aio and only affects larger (~6G+) partitions. This is most likely not pfs3 related at all (becoming "not a dos disk") but either some software conflict or hardware problem.

[Toni Wilen]

pfs3aio reporting not a dos disk can mean it can't read last block of partition or not enough RAM (far too big buffers).

If problem only affects last partition of drive, try making it few megabytes smaller (leave unused data at the end). It can be also bad CF card.

[rabidgerry]

Yeah I wasn't deleting anything at all. Just turned the machine this afternoon then came back later on.

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

pfs3aio reporting not a dos disk can mean it can't read last block of partition or not enough RAM (far too big buffers).

If problem only affects last partition of drive, try making it few megabytes smaller (leave unused data at the end). It can be also bad CF card.

It is the last partition on the drive as well.

I've 128mb of fast ram, and I think I added 150 buffers to that partition.

If I make the partition a little smaller will it not erase everything on the partition?

[rabidgerry]

Originally Posted by Boing-Ball

Another thing to consider. Have you ran a Virus check on the partitions?

I haven't. I used to have a virus in my Payback installation ages ago but I got rid of that. It was on this partition though.

Can I still run a virus checker when the partition is not a dos disk?

Running PFSSALV2 I can see all the stuff is still there. It wont let me salvage it onto one of the other partitions though.

[rabidgerry]

Originally Posted by Boing-Ball

Worth downloading these off Aminet.net

http://aminet.net/package/util/virus/VirusZ

http://aminet.net/package/util/virus/xvslibrary

I thought that when I had that Happynewyear Virus. The thing spread everywhere!

I have the latest xvslibrary and VirusZ. I believe the Happynewyear virus was actually in the Payback.lha residing on that partition. But as I mentioned I did get this removed. This was the only place it was found and to be fair I have not had any other strange behaviour other than this DH3 going tits up.

I'll double check to be sure but I'm certain it's gone. Might be on an ancient backup though.

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

pfs3aio reporting not a dos disk can mean it can't read last block of partition or not enough RAM (far too big buffers).

If problem only affects last partition of drive, try making it few megabytes smaller (leave unused data at the end). It can be also bad CF card.

Tried to make the partition a little smaller but it didn't do anything, and then wiped the data that was on there. Thankfully had used PFSSALV2 to retrieve what was on there before doing anything so it wasn't a great loss. But it would nice to know for future how to do what you mean?

I also suspect could the CF card be dying, but I've no idea how to check. Probably on windows but may be not when it's formatted as an Amiga hard drive.

[rabidgerry]

Originally Posted by Boing-Ball

I would just bite the bullet.. Get yourself a new CF card. Format it up with PFS3 V 19.2 (3.1 Final). That way you are covering your bases.
Personally I’m using SD cards as they are easier and sometimes cheaper to acquire.
If you really want something more robust, then look for SSD drives..

I have ended up changing CF card. I think there was something wrong with it as I encountered this same issue about 4 more times. Even creating smaller partitions. Mind you I think over 4gb is ok with scsi 43.45. We shall see how the news card goes. I noticed it wont boot with IDEFix enabled in my startup which is weird, given the old card did. Had to remove that. Reason I have IDEFix in there is cause I have the Amiga Kit IDE speeder 4x ide interface installed.