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Conference hydra::amiga_v1

Title:	AMIGA NOTES
Notice:	Join us in the NEW conference - HYDRA::AMIGA_V2
Moderator:	HYDRA::MOORE

Created:	Sat Apr 26 1986
Last Modified:	Wed Feb 05 1992
Last Successful Update:	Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:	5378
Total number of notes:	38326

4245.0. "Disk Not Validated" by HKFINN::MACDONALD (VAXELN - Realtime Software Pubs) Tue Nov 06 1990 09:29

    This morning I turned on my monitor and saw a Software System Error on
    my screen. It may have been caused by UUCP V1.06D which runs at night.
    I rebooted but discovered that one of my hard disk partitions (the one
    containing UUCP:) was NOT VALIDATED. I clicked on the disk icon and the
    memory gauge showed an empty disk. I tried DiskMaster, and everything
    was there. However, accessing anything produced a Disk Not Validated
    message. I also got a message at one point about a Key being set or
    unset?
    
    Can anyone explain these messages and tell me how to correct the
    problem? Thanks.
    
    Paul

T.R	Title	User	Personal Name	Date	Lines
4245.1	"Is this the answer?"	SUOSW3::MOEGENBURG		`Wed Nov 07 1990 06:35`	10
	DGM-Software Germany Re. 4245 < Disk not Validated > If I get this message from my system, I use the Workbench Diskdoctor or I kill this Disk. - DGM Software Germany
4245.2	hard to say	SALEM::LEIMBERGER		`Wed Nov 07 1990 07:34`	5
	I used to play a game that would often do this to a hd partition. I used to issue an info command,and then ask for a directory. At that point it would reboot without the error. Never gave me that warm fuzzy feeling but it worked. bill
4245.3	Mission Accomplished	DICKNS::MACDONALD	VAXELN - Realtime Software Pubs	`Wed Nov 07 1990 09:12`	5
	I ended up reformatting the drive. I then restored it with Quarterback. Of course Quarterback doesn't create empty directories, so it took a bit of handy work to get all of my assigns back together. Plus I lost all my unread newsgroups (never back'em up in order to save floppies).
4245.4	Validation not big problem	MKODEV::OSBORNE	Blade Walker	`Tue Nov 13 1990 12:44`	16
	re:.3 > I ended up reformatting the drive. I may be wrong, since this hasn't happened to me in a while, but "disk not validated" is not cause for lots of concern. It means that something prevented the Amiga from "validating" the last file write. (Power failure or pulled floppy from drive, e.g.) All the Amiga wants to do is validate the disk, and then it will act like nothing happened. The only problem is that validating a hard disk means spending some time reading the whole disk to develop what I believe are just some checksums. If a file was being written when the problem occurred, it's gone. But that should be the most that is wrong.
4245.5	Requester means failure	TLE::RMEYERS	Randy Meyers	`Tue Nov 13 1990 13:13`	13
	Re: .4 I think that the problem is that if you get the requester, it means that AmigaDOS failed when it attempted to validate the drive. Normally, AmigaDOS will quietly attempt to validate any unvalidated disk upon first access. There is no requester: the only sign that a disk validation is taking place is that all access to the disk is very slow, the disk is doing lots of I/O, and if you do an INFO command, the disk will be marked as "Validating". You only get the requester if the process fails to create a valid bitmap of blocks used on the disk (usually, a "Key already set" error, which means one block appears in two separate files).
4245.6		NBOSWS::FRIES		`Wed Nov 14 1990 05:44`	9
	Is there a way to know which two files are affected by the 'key already set' error message?? Perhaps it would be possible to delete these two files so it's not necessary to reformat the disk. Or isn't a write access possible at this time? Gerald (I'm sorry about the sick first version of my reply)
4245.7	Fixing the disk using a disk editor	TLE::RMEYERS	Randy Meyers	`Wed Nov 14 1990 16:26`	37
	Re: .6 >Is there a way to know which two files are affected by the 'key already set' >error message?? The disk validator itself does not track the information. However, you could write a program to do this yourself. Your would have an array with elements for every block in the partition. The array elements would be pointers to the name of the file that owns the block. Scan the disk, and note which blocks belong to which files. If you find a block owned by a file, check to see if its array element is NULL, if so, this is the only file so far that owns the block, and so store the filename pointer in the element. If the element isn't NULL, then you have previously found another file that also owns the block. Print out the name of the previously stored file and the name of the current file whose blocks you are collecting. AmigaDOS does pretty much the same as the above, but elements in its array are single bits that store TRUE or FALSE (whether the block has been found allocated to a file or not). >Perhaps it would be possible to delete these two files so it's not necessary >to reformat the disk. That's pretty much the type of thing people do with disk editors. >Or isn't a write access possible at this time? With the FastFileSystem at least, the partition is write-locked if the validation fails. However, if you access the disk below the level of the file system, you can still write to it. (In other words, the delete command will do you no good, but a disk editor would.) My advice: unless you are a disk wizard, cut your losses by backing up the disk and reformatting it. That's what I would do.
4245.8	DiskSalv	CSCOAC::KENDRIX_J		`Wed Nov 14 1990 16:48`	10
	re:.7 Actually there's already a program out which dones a fine job of analysing disks and possibly restoring bad ones. DiskSalv by Dave Haynie, it should be on tape. I don't know if I would try and restore a trashed HD with it, actually, I know I wouldn't, but if you just want to know the extent of the damage, then that will do it just fine. JK