🚀 go-pugleaf

In <22906@ut-emx.UUCP>, mwood@ut-emx.UUCP (Matt A. Wood) writes:
>I had a system crash while writing to my hard disk, and now my hard 
>disk does not validate (key 14537 already set, it tells me).  I've
>run the HDToolBox verify program that came with the drive (A590), and
>it finds no bad blocks.  Diskdoctor finds a handful of bad blocks, but
>the numbers are ~19000, not 14537).  I have DiskSalv V1.42, but am
>not clear on how it might be used to patch a section of disk (if
>it can).  

A 'key n already set' error is not an indication of a bad block.  It is an
Amigados error that says you have two hash table entries pointing at the same
block, which is illegal to Amigados, and "don't care" to the drive controller.

About the only way, currently, that I know of to save the disk without backing
up and restoring, is to use something like Sectorama (or DiskX, or DiskEd, or
???), which is a sector editor that allows you to look at the information in
any sector on the disk. Unfortunately this does require a knowledge of the file
system, and even if you know the file system well, it is tedious, to say the
least.

What you have to do is find the hash table entries in error. These entries are
contained in the root block, user directory blocks, file header blocks,
extension blocks, and in the 'hash chains'. You can narrow down the search in
many cases by knowing what you were doing when the problem happened.

You were writing a file, so the problem is most likely associated with that
file. If you copy the file elsewhere (floppy, ram:, etc.) and then use
Sectorama to remove it from the directory structure, you might solve the
problem. You might also have another problem though, since that block is also
part of another path/file, and the result might be a 'funny' directory or a
bogus file with parts of two files in it. At least the disk should validate
once you have removed the file that was being written.

Perform a 'diskchange operation after removing the file, to cause the validator
to kick in again.

>The question then is: 
>   Do I really have to backup and reformat my hard disk just because the
>d*mn system crashed while writing a file?!?   Please tell me I don't 
>have to do this, please!

Only if the above desn't work. We don't have the tools for easily doing
anything about munged file systems yet.

-larry

--
" All I ask of my body is that it carry around my head."
         - Thomas Alva Edison -
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|   //   Larry Phillips                                                 |
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