Amiga 4000 Workbench 9301 Error

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anagrama

anagrama

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You may remember a few weeks back that I posted about a none working Amiga 4000/40, well I re-sat the roms and started to get a green flashing screen with no ram installed and I then tried a totally different memory module other than ones I got with the Amiga with and its now working fine!

However im hoping someone will come to my rescue and help me restore the hard drive.

Basically the computer is an ex Micropose employee machine, i was told this when I bought it and the computer has the original property of Micropose sticker on it so I was really hoping that the hard drive will be working fine so I could see if any goodies were on it.

Unfortunately the hard drive wont work properly. When loading into workbench I get a system request message that says...

"Workbench has a read error on disk block 9301"

I get the option to then either retry or cancel and when I do either it then boots into the main workbench screen but the system clock just hangs and theres nothing I can do to restore it.

Does anyone know the problem and how I can solve it?
 
Sorry, I don't know anything about repairing the amiga file system - but If I were you I would install a clean system and use the drive you have as slave and copy as much as possible over. What I do know a failing hard disk is better of leaving off until you are ready to copy over or format that drive.

There are tons of almost free hard disks (probalby from local users near you) and some users prefer IDE to CF solutions. (I only use them for machines I use somethimes, not daily 8 hours)

http://cgi.ebay.com/40Pin-IDE-CF-Co...008?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4aa6093088

There are even with pci brackets - cages - the sky is the limit.
 
The hard drive most like has a physical error on one of the platters inside the drive :(

Is the HDD an IDE or a SCSI model ?

Usually, when I come across an IDE HDD that needs some file-rescuing, my first attempt
always is to try to force-clone it to a working HDD. One software that has been serving
me greatly is Norton Ghost on PC. I plug the broken HDD and the working HDD to the same
PC, boot the Norton Ghost and then make the settings so that "Force Clone" and, depending
on the case, "Image All" (changes to sector-by-sectory -copy) and "Direct IDE access" are enabled.

Then I do a Disk to Disk clone-selection and let the computer do the rest of the work.
It may take 30 minutes to 15 hours and is a bit brute-force but it has saved countless
of Windows -systems during my 9 years of experience of computer repairs etc.
 
I did go to get my CF card from my 1200 but soon realised the 4000 works off a full size IDE port! :unsure:

Also the Amiga has 3.1 roms and I only have 3.0 workbench disks, im not sure if 3.0 will work with 3.1 roms?

But its a good idea about using it as a slave drive and getting what I can that way. Ill have to dig out an IDE hard drive, does anyone know if a 20gb or 40gb IDE hard drive will work with an Amiga 4000? I have some of those spare.

Edit

It is an IDE drive, is there any other programs that would do the same? I dont really want to buy norton ghost if I dont have to
 
It will work but you need to do some homework then. There are way's to use all that storage - but I am just a classic user so I just know how to install it to have a 512 meg system partition and a 4 Gb work partition and after that, I can't help you.

Use hdinstools from aminet and write it on a floppy. You'll be fine with that.

http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/hdinst

I am not sure it will work 3.1 disks work with 3.0 for most. Me thinks other way around as well, but not sure. I think it will suffice to copy the old hard drive.

On amiga you don't need ghost - you prepare,format partitions and just copy the files.
 
Are you suggesting a RAW copy on a PC? I don't get the point honestly. :help:
 
jvdboss: It's true you don't _need_ Ghost, unless there's problems with the filesystem and thus there can be files that cannot be copied manually.
In other words, the drive goes "stuck" when trying to access some files. In that case it's not good to risk out just by trying to run a filesystem-fixing
program on it since it cannot do anything to the physically broken sectors. I would suggest that in a case like that, first a sector-by-sector clone be
done and then the filesystem repaired. That way the filesystem can actually be repaired and the repairprogram won't have to try to write/use the
physically broken area of the drive and probably expand the problem. Just my 2-5 cents worth :)

---------- Post added at 21:20 ---------- Previous post was at 21:19 ----------

jvdboss: yes a RAW copy. That way one can get over the physically broken sectors and then
actually try to fix the filesystem. At least that has served me excellently during the years
regardless of the actual platform (Mac/PC/AmigaOS)
 
Ok I am with you know, sorry for the questions - i did not understand it's better to ask then - I'll just offer the linux way.

Another safe way if you have a pc and linux live cd and some storage on the unit

dd if=/dev/sda of=~/amiga4000.img (that will take long and dumb in raw bit by bit)

then you take another drive and

dd if=amiga4000.img of=/dev/sda

It will write mistakes back.
 
jvdbossc: No problem with the questions it's ok :thumbsup:

The Linux approach is definitely the way to go if you have a PC.
No software to be installed, just live-cd-boot and off-you-go. :)

BTW, as it's an ex-Microprose -machine I would take all the time in the
world to ensure that all the data is retrieved JUST IN CASE there's
something of community/historics-value there. This "digital age" has
already taken enough of it's toll regarding legendary and culturally
important data&works lost on aging HDD's and other magnetic medias :(
 
For the Amiga you must have Quarterback Tools (latest version is 7.31 and mandatory for A4000 FFS) or DiskSalv IV.

Then let the program to do a Validate on the HD (Disk Salv) or QBTools (select repair disk).
 
OK Ill have a go using one of those free software packages, if these are no good then the offer of Ghost would be excellent ferrara, thanks!

The hard drive is a Seagate ST3243A which I think is a 210mb hard drive. The only spare drives I have are 20gb and it looks like workbench 3.1 doesnt recognise them (I now have a set of 3.1 disks to use)

Can anyone tell me what I need to do to get a 20gb hard drive working with an Amiga 4000 so that I can use the original drive as a slave so that I check if anything interesting is on it? Theres every chance theres not much on it so id like to check it this way first.

I did a quick search for a guide online but couldnt find anything, if anyone can send to a guide link they know of that would be great :)
 
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