Skid Row collection ... after about 31yrs ...

[LongLifeA1200]

I wonder if Galahad is willing to continue what Subzero only entrusted him to do?

Don't have to worry (at least for the time being) about a certain moderator that would lock stuff unnecessarily.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by LongLifeA1200

Don't have to worry (at least for the time being) about a certain moderator that would lock stuff unnecessarily.

I locked the original thread after constant harassment by jarr and mai.

Where's the problem with that exactly? Do you actually understand what a GMod's job is?

...and I would also unlock when Galahad wanted to post something new / and then relock.

[curtcool]

Well, what was posted of the Skid Row collection so far contained interesting stuff. Hopefully there's much more, hopefully all will be ripped by Galahad, and if not, I'm sure there are people here who are more than willing to help. Count me in, too, though I suspect it would be easier for someone a bit closer to uk ...

[Subzero]

Originally Posted by curtcool

Well, what was posted of the Skid Row collection so far contained interesting stuff. Hopefully there's much more, hopefully all will be ripped by Galahad, and if not, I'm sure there are people here who are more than willing to help. Count me in, too, though I suspect it would be easier for someone a bit closer to uk ...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hiwhm5id5r...Drama.zip?dl=0
all the quarterbackups, from me, which no one is able to handle aka Restoring back to HD. all backups are in .adf format, me loaded qbbackup, but i could only restore 1disk, since iam using an emulator .... also lack of time nowadays... go get em, try, be lucky!!

[hitm4n]

Hi. I remember doing some multi disk backups using Quarterback Tools back in the day. Are your backups different in some way? I just wonder why there is a problem with unpacking them again, you said you could only do 1 disk as you are using an emulator? Does Quarterback not work under emulation correctly? Or... hmm, is this because they are massive harddrive backups and you need real matching harddrives to do the restores? I bet thats it is it? If so, i can imagine how replicating some 30 year old harddrives might be tricky

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Subzero

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hiwhm5id5r...Drama.zip?dl=0
all the quarterbackups, from me, which no one is able to handle aka Restoring back to HD. all backups are in .adf format, me loaded qbbackup, but i could only restore 1disk, since iam using an emulator .... also lack of time nowadays... go get em, try, be lucky!!

Just had a quick look, I could see content from the series of disks I looked at:

[Carlos Ace]

Originally Posted by DamienD

Just had a quick look, I could see content from the series of disks I looked at:

But does not have all the disks to restore...

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Carlos Ace

But does not have all the disks to restore...

Yeah, tried to restore a few sets. Missing disks and it's also not clear what's the last disk; or even if they are all the same set.

[dlfrsilver]

I have stored and sorted and came to the same conclusion as you, we need the other missing Qback disks to get the datas.

[jarre]

crazy.......but wait.........i will be reading this without further comments.........

[Galahad/FLT]

The majority of the collection was given to STE to convert.

The problem we have with Quarterback is if even *1* disk out of a run of disks used to back something up is broken beyond saving, then the entire run of that backup is ruined.

I will get hold of STE and find out what has happened to the rest of the disks, I know he is a carer for him mum, and this COVID lockdown which I'm guessing puts extra pressure on him probably hasn't helped.

But the thread last time was locked for good reason, it turned into a fucking shit show.

Maybe ensure that doesn't happen again would be my guess

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

But the thread last time was locked for good reason, it turned into a fucking shit show.

Maybe ensure that doesn't happen again would be my guess

Exactly

So much for LongLifeA1200's smart-arse comment in the opening post, that was totally unnecessary:

Originally Posted by LongLifeA1200

Don't have to worry (at least for the time being) about a certain moderator that would lock stuff unnecessarily.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

The majority of the collection was given to STE to convert.

The problem we have with Quarterback is if even *1* disk out of a run of disks used to back something up is broken beyond saving, then the entire run of that backup is ruined.

I will get hold of STE and find out what has happened to the rest of the disks, I know he is a carer for him mum, and this COVID lockdown which I'm guessing puts extra pressure on him probably hasn't helped.

But the thread last time was locked for good reason, it turned into a fucking shit show.

Maybe ensure that doesn't happen again would be my guess

We will simply wait for the next batches.

[LongLifeA1200]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

The problem we have with Quarterback is if even *1* disk out of a run of disks used to back something up is broken beyond saving, then the entire run of that backup is ruined.

Can Quarterback be tricked into accepting a fake disk?
How fragmented is the data when it is backed up?

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

The majority of the collection was given to STE to convert.

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

I will get hold of STE and find out what has happened to the rest of the disks, I know he is a carer for him mum, and this COVID lockdown which I'm guessing puts extra pressure on him probably hasn't helped.

A lot of us would be happy to hear from him.

[Exodous]

Many years ago (2002 according to the file timestamps), I used the 2 disk drive method to get all my Amiga disks into my PC. There were several Quarterback sets, but with some missing disks.

If the data is compressed, then you've most likely got no chance.

It if isn't compressed, then it is possible to create fake disks for ones that are missing.

From my backups, I reverse engineered the format (*) for uncompressed backups and to replicate the missing disks, the format of all disks apart from the first is as follows:

• Byte 1 & 2: ASCII 'QB' or 'Qb' to match the original disks
• Byte 3 & 4: ASCII for the disk number with a leading 0, e.g. '04', '11', '23' etc.
• Byte 5: Value of the disk number, e.g. 0x04, 0x0b, 0x17
• Byte 6: 0x00
• Byte 7, 8, 9, 10: Date (just copy from one of the other disks in the set)
• Byte 11, 12, 13, 14: Time (just copy from one of the other disks in the set)
• Bytes 15 - 901,120: Data

To be able to identify the corrupt files, I filled the data content on the fake disks with a repeating word (as in 16 bits, not a written word) that didn't exist in the rest of the backup set. After the restoration was completed, searched the restoration directory for any files with my word of data and discarded any matches as corrupt.


If you're missing the first disk in a set, but have the last one, the index is replicated on there, so it's also possible to create a fake disk 1 which can then be used to restore the files, as I did that too, but that was quite involved and far more work than I can easily explain here.

(*) Since I did this myself, the source code to Quarterback has been made available via Aminet, so it may be possible to view that and understand if compressed sets can be recovered using a similar method.

And then I forgot to put in the link to the source... http://aminet.net/package/disk/bakup/quarterback_src