Corrupted HDD Image With Bad SCSI Cable

[rjkucia]

Hey all, I've been using a RaSCSI with my SE/30, which worked great until I bought a cheap SCSI cable on Amazon and tried to use it. I apparently upset the SCSI gods and goddesses and now my main boot image won't load. When I try to mount it from another boot disk, it tells me the disk is damaged and needs to be initialized. While I've learned my lesson, ideally I'd like to be able to recover my image in some way so I don't have to start from scratch. Any recommendations on that? I'm not sure exactly what the error message means, like if it's an issue with the files, or the file system itself, and I couldn't find an answer for what to do when that happens. It sounds like normally this means the physical HDD is dying, but of course that's not the case here, since it's just an .hda file.

Thanks in advance!

 

[pfuentes69]

What happens if you try to access the disk image from Basillisk?
Maybe you could then use some disk repair tool.
(I'm mostly guessing)

 

[rjkucia]

I haven't tried Basilisk - I assumed that it would try (and fail) to mount in the same way, but I can give it a go.

Do you know of a disk repair tool that would work for this? I could also try something like making a fresh image and copying over the files manually using something like CiderPress (assuming that it's not too broken for CiderPress)

 

[JustG]

Hmm you've got me worried now. I was about to order a long, three foot 50 pin cable from Amazon so I could snake it out the computer and plug in drives without having to open the case. Maybe I need to look at other options.

 

[rjkucia]

This is the one I bought: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07JPDWNKY/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Maybe it has to be actually designed for SCSI so that the signal doesn't get messed up? No idea, but when I was using it even my Rominator boot image gave me trouble, so apparently messing with SCSI can bring bad news lol

 

[JustG]

That's the cable that's suggested on the RaSCSI github, isn't it? I ordered one of those too, haven't had a chance to use it.

 

[Volvo242GT]

Hmm you've got me worried now. I was about to order a long, three foot 50 pin cable from Amazon so I could snake it out the computer and plug in drives without having to open the case. Maybe I need to look at other options.

I'd see if I could find a SCSI cable from an 8600 or a 9600 that's being parted out... It'll have a lot of connectors on it, but it'll be more reliable, IMO. I bought one for my B&W G3 from a used computer reseller (RE-PC in the Seattle area). Am using it with an Adaptec 29160N SCSI card, with the cable sticking out of one of the PCI slot openings on the back, along with a power cable harness.

 

[rjkucia]

That's the cable that's suggested on the RaSCSI github, isn't it? I ordered one of those too, haven't had a chance to use it.

Oh is it? I just searched Amazon for "DB25 cable" and found it that way. Weird that it doesn't work then!

 

[rjkucia]

I finally got around to playing around with the image in CiderPress, and CiderPress happily opens the image, and the files appear to be fine. So I tried to copy all the files from that image to a fresh one, but that didn't seem to work. I think CiderPress doesn't like it if you try to copy over a ton of files at once. Additionally, it doesn't place the pasted files in the directory they were originally in. For example, I tried just copying over the system folder, which worked, except all the system files were just in the root of the drive. The fastest thing is probably going to end up just starting over from a fresh 7.5.1 image and going from there - unless anyone has suggestions?

 

[rjkucia]

Okay, phew, it's been a bit of work, but I've figured it out and recovered the drive with no issues. Here's what I did:

• Installed UTM on my M1 Macbook Air
• Installed OS X Tiger on that from an image up on the Internet Archive
• Got that on my network to transfer files via FTP
• Sent the corrupt image over there, along with a new fresh image
• Installed Disk Warrior and Data Rescue II on my Tiger system
• Mounted the fresh image in Finder
• Used Data Rescue II to pull all the files off of my "bad" image onto the fresh one
• Used Disk Warrior to "clean up" the new image and bless the System Folder
• Sent the fresh image back to my RaSCSI
• Bam, it works. Boots up fine, everything is there.

tl;dr: Old HFS recovery tools are magic, and this would have all been a lot easier if I had a PPC machine on hand