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Final Write Document
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1996-07-24
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Upper
Disk Tools
for the
AMIGA
TM
Copyright © 1992, 1993
Upper Design
TM
User Guide
Written by
Manuel Lemos
Copyright
Copyright © 1992, 1993 by
Upper Design
TM
. All rights reserved. Printed in the United Kingdom. No part of this
publication may be translated, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system. or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher,
Upper Design
TM
.
Disclaimer
This product is offered for sale
as is
with no representation of fitness for any particular purpose. No Warranty of
any kind is either expressed or implied. The user assumes all risks and
responsibilities related to its use. The material within is believed to be
accurate, but the author and
Upper Design
TM
reserve the right to make changes to the software or documentation without
notice.
Trademarks
Upper
Disk Tools
TM
,
Recovery
TM
,
DSBackup
TM
,
Upper Design
TM
are trademarks of Manuel Lemos in Portugal and in other countries.
AMIGA
TM
,AmigaDOS and the Amiga logo are trademarks of Commodore-Amiga, Inc. in United
States of America and in other countries.
MS-DOS is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
Macintosh is a registered trademark of Apple Computers.
Notice
All the programs and documentation included in this package were developed
using only
AMIGA
TM
computers and
AMIGA
TM
specific software.
Acknowledgements
Upper Design
wishes to thank to all of those that volunteered to help making this project
possible.
Upper Design
wishes to thank in particular to Paul Hammant for his continued support and
mostly for being the mentor of this project.
Special thanks to Michael Sinz, Carolyn Schepner, Randel Jesup, James Cooper,
Douglas Walker, Nico François and Stefan Becker.
Thanks to Sérgio Soares for having drawn the icon images for the programs.
Also thanks to all those that helped in the localization of this package's
programs:
Deutsch
Peter Simons (
simons@peti.GUN.de
)
Thomas Ganter (
ganterth@mathematik.tu-muenchen.de
)
Daniel Amor (
amor@student.uni-tuebingen.de
)
Français
Cedric Beust
Nederlands
Paul Kolenbrander (
boinger@myamy.hacktic.nl
)
Slovenski
Jure Vrhovnik (
Jure.Vrhovnik@ijs.si
)
Dansk
Mark Cassidy
Norsk
Eyvind Bernhardsen (
eyvind@lise.unit.no
)
Svenska
Erik Bergersjoe (
d9erikb@dtek.chalmers.se
)
And others translators that will help with localization to others languages not
yet available by the time this manual is being printed.
Special fonts design and localization coordination done by:
Daniel Amor
Brain Storm Development
Ludwigstr. 124
70197 Stuttgart
Germany
Installation
It is recommend that the first thing that should be done before installing any
Upper
Disk Tools
applications, is to make a backup copy of this package's floppy disk. Despite
this is not a mandatory procedure, the backup copy should taken to be used as
the working copy.
To make a backup copy of the
Upper
Disk Tools
floppy disk, just use from the Shell the AmigaDOS
DiskCopy
command.
DiskCopy FROM DF0: to DF0:
Consultation of the Amiga's manuals for usage of the shell command
DiskCopy
would be essential reading to understand better how to take a backup copy of
a floppy disk.
Although every
Upper
Disk Tools
applications can be started directly from the working copy floppy disk, an
Installer
script is provided to let the applications be installed in an hard disk.
To install the
Upper
Disk Tools
applications in an hard disk, from the WorkBench, open a drawer named
Install
in the working copy of
Upper
Disk Tools
floppy disk. In that drawer there several icons named after several language
names. To start the installation process, just double-click any of those icons
according to your preferred language.
You will be prompted to reply to several questions about the way you want the
Upper
Disk Tools
applications to be installed. If the language of the selected icon to start the
instalation process is already supported by
Upper
Disk Tools
instalation script, the questions you have to reply during installation
process will appear in that language.
If you want to un-install
Upper
Disk Tools
applications later after installed, you only need to delete a directory named
UDT
that is created during the installation process.
Contents
Recovery
1
Introduction
2
Quick start
4
Usage
5
The user interface window
5
Disk scanning related buttons
5
Search for files tick boxes
5
Search pattern text input box
6
Search method cycle button
6
Skip read errors tick box
6
Before scanning a disk... cycle button
6
Scanned drives list view
7
Free drive button
7
Buffers number input box
7
Other buttons and menus
7
Save button or menu item
7
Hide button or menu item
8
Help button and menu item
8
Quit button or menu item
8
About menu item
9
Provide icons menu item
9
Low memory setup menu item
10
Scanning a disk
11
Search for files
11
Search for
NOT_DELETED_FILES
12
Search for
DELETED_FILES
12
Search for
LOST_FILES
12
Search for
HEADERLESS_FILES
13
Scanning
SEARCH_PATTERN
13
Search method
13
Fast search method
14
Deep search method
15
LOCK_DRIVE
15
Make the disk unavailable for system use
15
Make the disk act as write protected
17
SKIP_ERRORS
while scanning a disk
18
Device options
18
DEVICE_NAME
option
18
VOLUME_NAME
option
19
BUFFERS
option
21
Commodity options
21
CX_POPUP
- Commodity pop-up option
21
CX_POPKEY
- Commodity pop-up key
22
CX_PRIORITY
- Commodity priority
24
System options
24
Locale
LANGUAGE
24
PUBSCREEN
- Public screen
25
TOOLPRI
- Tool task priority
26
Outstanding features
31
Trouble shooting
32
In case of low memory...
32
Freeing a scanned drive
33
Device In Use
34
Technical notes
34
Workbench support
34
Multi language support
35
On-line help support
36
Memory usage
36
Scannable disk types
38
Device level reading errors
40
Concepts
DSBackup
46
Introduction
47
Usage
48
Options
Introduction
Recovery
is a tool that enables the user to retrieve files that have been deleted from
a disk, or for some reason are unreadable through normal AmigaDOS usage.
After analysing a disk, it determines what can be recovered and lets the user
access the files on the disk and save them to another
volume
.
The files that
Recovery
can retrieve, are accessed through an AmigaDOS virtual
device
called
REC:
(
volume
name
Recovery:
). This can be accessed through the Workbench, from the Shell or from any tool
capable of reading disk based files.
Recovery
is completely safe to use as no data on the volume in question will be
modified during its use. That means that neither
Recovery
nor any other application using the drive will be allowed to modify data
through the use of the
REC:
device. If the disk was damaged before, it won't be any worse after using
Recovery
.
Introduction -
1
Recovery
-A tool for retrieving deleted files from disks
Quick start
Start
Recovery
either through the AmigaDOS Shell or from Workbench.
Use the Shell, Workbench or your favourite directory utility program to browse
the directory structure of
REC:
device
(
Recovery:
volume
). Storage devices that are scanable by
Recovery
appear as directories inside the
REC:
Drives
directory.
If you are using the Shell, it is recommended that you use the AmigaDOS
Run
command to start
Recovery
as a background program. This allows you to analyse the
REC:
device
from the same Shell window right after
Recovery
is launched.
Examining one of the
drive
sub-directories within
REC:Drives
directory for the first time, will start
Recovery
scanning process
for the disk in the drive with that name.
While this is happening a small window will open showing the progress of the
scanning procedure. It also shows an estimate of the time remaining for its
completion.
Once scanned, files within that disk that were accessible normally through
AmigaDOS usage, are listed within a directory named
Files_in_disk
. Deleted files may be found in either
Deleted_files
or
Lost_files
directories.
Lost files are all of those deleted files for which it was not possible to find
their respective parent directory. If
Recovery
finds any files for which it was not possible to find their file
header block
, they will appear in
Headerless_Files
directory.
From this stage, you can do anything with the files that does not involve
writing data to the actual scanned
volume
. So, you can read, copy, execute or even archive them and perhaps using a
backup program to take a backup of any files.
When you have finnished all data recovery from the scanned disk, the respective
drive can be freed for normal system usage. This will also release all the
other resources allocated during the disk
scanning process
.
See
Scanning a disk
and
Trouble shooting - Freeing a scanned drive
sections.
Quick start -
2
Recovery
-A tool for retrieving deleted files from disks
Usage
Recovery
can be started from either the Amiga Shell or the Workbench. Whichever way it
is started, it can be customised by using certain options.
When started from the Amiga's Command Shell, these options are listed
after name of the program, as in this example:
Run Recovery DEVICE=REK VOLUME=REKOVER
When started from the Workbench the options are retrieved by
Recovery
from its icon. Use
Information
item from Workbench's
Icons
menu after having selected
Recovery
's Icon. The options are maintained in the list of
Tool Types
in the Information window.
Whether
Recovery
is used from the Shell or the Workbench, its options have the same name and
achieve the same effect. Note that all options names must be of the form
OPTION NAME=OPTION
V
ALUE
.
Although all options names are long and explicit, they also have shorter alias
to save on finger wear and tear. The example above showed how
Recovery
will set the device name (see later) to
REK
when started. The short name for device is
DEV
, so
DEV=REK
would also have achieved the same thing.
Some of the options can be controlled, to a limited degree, while
Recovery
is running.
Recovery
opens a
user interface window
and there are various buttons and gadgets to allow the control of the options.
If
Recovery
was started from the Workbench, these options can be saved to
Recovery
's icon.
Recovery
will use defaults if there are any options missing when it is started. Most
of the time
Recovery
's options will not need to be changed from the default, so they don't have to
be specified.
Usage -
4
Recovery
-A tool for retrieving deleted files from disks
The user interface window
Most of
Recovery
's options may be set in the user interface window. Other actions may also be
started from this window.
Disk scanning related buttons
For more detailed information about the options related with these buttons, see
Scanning a disk
section.
Search for files tick boxes
These tick boxes that indicate whether
Recovery
will search for the indicated respective type files.
See
Scanning a disk
-
NOT_DELETED_FILES, DELETED_FILES, LOST_FILES, HEADERLESS_FILES
options section.
Search pattern text input box
This is a box where text should be entered to specify an AmigaDOS file
pattern.
Recovery
will compare all files it finds with that pattern as it scans a volume. Only
files that match that pattern available for retrieval. If the pattern is blank,
then all files will be eligible for retrieval. The pattern cannot exceed 256
characters in length.
See
SEARCH_PATTERN
option section.
Search method cycle button
This button indicates which one of two possible methods
Recovery
should use to scan a disk. It can be either a fast search method or a deep
search method. The deep search method usually takes more memory and time to
complete.
See
FAST_SEARCH
option section.
Skip read errors tick box
This tick box indicates whether
Recovery
will automatically skip over damaged disk blocks during the
scanning process
. If the scanned
volume
has many damaged blocks, it is probably best to set this option.
See
SKIP_ERRORS
option section.
Before scanning a disk... cycle button
This cycle button determines the availability of the device being scanned to
other applications. Basically it will prevent that the contents of the disk may
be changed during the
scanning process
. It can either make the disk act as write protected or make it unavailable for
system use.
See
Scanning a disk -
LOCK_DRIVE
option section.
Scanned drives list view
This list displays all the
drives
that
Recovery
currently has analised. Selecting one of these drives and clicking on the
Free drive
button, will cause that drive to be freed.
Free drive button
This button is used to free any drive selected in the
Scanned drivcs
list view. If none is selected, this button will appear disabled.
See
Trouble shooting -Freeing a scanned drive
sections.
Buffers number input box
This box indicates the maximum amount of blocks that
Recovery
will buffer in memory at the same time to store the most read disk blocks.
This value affects the performance of
Recovery
while scanning a disk as well as while retrieving files from the scanned disk.
See
BUFFERS
option section.
Other buttons and menus
Save button or menu item
Use this button or menu item to tell
Recovery
to save the current option settings. The options are saved in
Recovery
's Workbench icon as tooltypes. Because of this, if
Recovery
was not started from Workbench, this option will appear disabled. The next
time
Recovery
is started from Workbench these options will be used automatically.
Hide button or menu item
This button or menu item option closes the
Recovery
's user interface window without quitting the program. Hitting the close window
button or the Escape key (
Esc
) also causes
Recovery
to hide its user interface window.
The user interface window can be recalled by activating the
hotkey
or instructing
Recovery
to show its interface using the Amiga's Commodity
Exchange
program.
See
Commodity - hot-key
section.
Help button and menu item
Use this button or menu option to ask for help. You can also obtain specific
help about the function of most of the user interfaces's window buttons and
menu items, by pressing the
Help
key and leaving the mouse pointer over the button or menu item about which
help is being asked.
See
Technical notes - On-line help support
.
Quit button or menu item
Recovery
can be instructed to quit by either using the quit button or menu item. If
Recovery
was started from the Shell, it can also be told to quit by issuing a
Break
AmigaDOS command to its Shell process.
When
Recovery
is instructed to quit, it first tries to free all scanned drives. It then
tries to remove the
REC:
device
from the system and closes user interface window (if opened).
Recovery
sometimes may not exit when requested due to some directories still being
locked
by other applications.
See
Trouble shooting - Device in Use
and
Freeing a scanned drive
sections.
About menu item
Use this menu item to tell
Recovery
to display a window requester that shows both the current version and the
revision of the program, as well as showing copyright and author information.
Provide icons menu item
This menu option, causes
Recovery
to provide icon files for all Workbench drawers that appear without one in the
REC:
device.
See
Technical notes - Workbench support
section.
Low memory setup menu item
This menu option, causes
Recovery
to turn off some of its own options so that extra memory can be conserved
during the
scanning process
.
It switches off the
scanning
of
not deleted
and
headerless
files as well reducing the amount of disk block
buffers
to a minimum. It also tries to free all scanned drives that are not currently
in use.
Holding any shift key while selecting this menu option, will switch these
options on again.
Setting these options to make
Recovery
use as less memory as possible, usually severely affects disk scanning
performance. But it improves the chances of
Recovery
being able to succesfully scan a disk in computers short of available memory.
See
Scanning a disk...
and
Trouble shooting - Freeing a scanned drive
sections.
Usage - User interface window -
5
Recovery
-A tool for retrieving deleted files from disks
Scanning a disk
The scanning process is the process by which
Recovery
analyses a
drive
for files. It is triggered by scanning one of the directories named after the
device name of the drive that is meant to be scanned, that is in the directory
REC:Drives
.
You can use any kind of directory tool to do this, including the WorkBench or
the the Amiga's Shell.
When started, a scanning progress requester window will appear showing a fuel
gauge progress bar and a timer that shows an estimate of the amount of time
remaining to the completion of the scanning process.
The scanning process can also be suspended or cancelled via the respectively
named buttons on that scanning progress window.
This process can take some time and memory depending upon the amount of files
and directories that are found in the
volume
. It can be speeded up or use less memory by changing some of the program's
options. See
Search method
.
There are a few options that are directly related with the scanning process.
They can be set either in the
user interface window
or as
Recovery
arguments.
Search for files
Search for
NOT_DELETED_FILES
This option indicates whether
Recovery
should look for files that have not been deleted. They may be found together
in a directory called
Files_in_disk
.
These files are the ones that are supposedly accessible through the normal
AmigaDOS usage. Because of that, searching for those files, may not be
necessary. It is therefore recommended that this option should be turned off to
conserve memory.
When the
fast search method
is used, this option is ignored and its tick box will appear shaded in the
user interface window
, because this method won't look for not deleted files by definition. See
Search method
.
Option argument name:
NOT_DELETED_FILES
Short name:
NDEL
Valid option values:
yes, no
Default value:
yes
Example:
NDEL=no
Search for
DELETED_FILES
This option indicates whether
Recovery
should look for deleted files while scanning a
drive
. They may be found together in a directory called
Deleted_files
.
Note that
Recovery
may consider a file as deleted, when because of some error, this file is not
reachable through normal AmigaDOS usage. This situation may be caused by an
unreadable preceding file in the same directory or any of its parent
directories.
Option argument name:
DELETED_FILES
Short name:
DEL
Valid option values:
yes, no
Default value:
yes
Example:
DEL=no
Search for
LOST_FILES
This option indicates whether
Recovery
should look for deleted files that for some reason it couldn't find all its
parent directories. These files are found in a directory called
Lost_Files
.
If many of these files are found, Workbench may take a long time to sort them
before they appear listed in a Workbench drawer window.
Option argument name:
LOST_FILES
Short name:
LOST
Valid option values:
yes, no
Default value:
yes
Example:
LOST=no
Search for
HEADERLESS_FILES
This option indicates whether
Recovery
should look for files for which
header blocks
couldn't be found, when possible. These files be found in a directory called
Headerless_Files
.
Searching of these types of files is possible only if the scanned disk was
formated as an
old file system
disk.
Option argument name:
HEADERLESS_FILES
Short name:
HLES
Valid option values:
yes, no
Default value:
yes
Example:
HLES=no
Scanning
SEARCH_PATTERN
A search pattern causes
Recovery
to only look for files whose names match the selected pattern. The pattern can
have wildcards in it like
#?.doc
meaning all files that end in
doc
.
The search pattern only applies to files. Directories are never filtered. If no
pattern is supplied, all scanned files will be accessible.
This option can speed up the scan slightly and facilitate easier finding of the
deleted and lost files.
It can be used to split the search in several scans with the advantage of using
less memory for each scan, than when no pattern was supplied.
Read about file patterns in the AmigaDOS user manual for further information.
Option argument name:
SEARCH_PATTERN
Short name:
PAT
Valid option values: any valid AmigaDOS pattern with upto 256 characters.
Default value: no pattern
Example:
PAT=~(#?.info)
Search method
To scan a
volume
,
Recovery
may use one of two search methods: fast search method and the deep search
method.
Fast search method
Fast search method usually causes a faster scan of the drive but it may under
some circumstances not be as complete as a deeper scan.
This method is based on the idea that if there are files on the
volume
that are deleted, then the disk blocks that they were using, are marked as
available in the disk's
bitmap
.
With this information,
Recovery
only has to check those blocks that are available for use, to look for deleted
files. If those blocks were not reused after those files were deleted, it will
be possible for
Recovery
to retrieve the files intact.
This method turns out to be a much faster method to search for files, but this
way
Recovery
will not look for not-deleted files. This is why the
Not deleted
button of the user interface window appears shaded when fast search is
enabled.
If for some reason
Recovery
is not able to find a valid
bitmap
for the
volume
, the user is prompted to indicate whether the deep search method should be
used or the whole process should be cancelled.
Deep search method
When using this method,
Recovery
will look for files in every block of the
volume
being scanned.
Scanning a
volume
using this method, takes more time to complete and it uses more
memory
. Anyway, this is the method to use when searching for files that although were
not deleted, for some reason they are not accessible through normal AmigaDOS
usage.
This may happen if any of the file's parent directories are either corrupt or
unreadable.
Option argument name:
FAST_SEARCH
Short name:
FAST
Valid option values:
yes, no
Default value:
yes
Example:
FAST=no
LOCK_DRIVE
This option selects what
Recovery
will do before scanning a disk in a drive. It can make the disk either
unavailable for system use or make it act as write protected.
Recovery
has to do one of these two actions, to ensure the integrity of the contents of
the disk while
Recovery
is scanning it. This way, any attempt to write any data on it by the system is
prevented.
Make the disk unavailable for system use
Making the disk unavailable for system use, means that no data can be read from
or written to it. Essentially the operating system thinks the media has been
removed from its drive (even hard disks).
This option is meant to ensure
Recovery
has complete control over the volume being scanned. Other programs won't be
able to access the drive while it is being scanned.
There are no circumstances where
Recovery
will initiate or allow data modification of the scanned volume. The scanned
drive is always protected from update.
Make the disk act as write protected
This option is meant to allow the drive to both be scanned by
Recovery
and used by any other applications. Files can be read or executed by other
programs while that disk is still on the scanned drives list.
When the scanned drive that was write protected by
Recovery
is freed, the disk must be physically write unprotected, to let the AmigaDOS
unlock to succeed.
Read about write protection in the section in the AmigaDOS manual pertaining to
the
Lock
command.
Note: because of a feature of AmigaDOS's software write protection, it is
necessary that the disk in the drive to be scanned is initially write enabled.
Write protect could have been achieved by moving the appropriate plastic tag on
a floppy disk or using the AmigaDOS lock command on any type of disk. Either
way the system needs to believe it to be write enabled before it can be made
write protected.
Note: It is possible that other programs write data in a disk scanned by
Recovery
overriding these protections. This is done by directly accessing the
respective disk
trackdisk
like
exec.library
's device .
Obviously this is not the recommended behaviour for programs, but some
utilities like disk formatters and copiers actually do this. Changing the data
in a disk this way while
Recovery
scanning it, may confuse
Recovery
.
Option argument name:
LOCK_DRIVE
Short name:
LOCK
Valid option values:
yes, no
Default value:
yes
Example:
LOCK=no
SKIP_ERRORS
while scanning a disk
During the
scanning process
,
device reading errors
may happen because of a possibly damaged sector. At this point, the user is
prompted to retry reading that faulty sector or or skip over it.
If a disk is seriously damaged, many of these reading errors may stop the
scanning process
.
This option allows the user to skip all the
reading errors
automatically, avoiding so the error requester to pop-up.
See
Technical notes - Device level reading
errors section.
Option argument name:
SKIP_ERRORS
Short name:
SERR
Valid option values:
yes, no
Default value:
yes
Example:
SERR=no
Usage - Scanning a disk -
10
Recovery
-A tool for retrieving deleted files from disks
Device options
Recovery
mounts an AmigaDOS
device
to provide access to the files it finds in a disk during the
scanning process.
Some parameters of that device can be set through some of
Recovery
's options.
DEVICE_NAME
option
This option determines what name is to be attributed to the
device
mounted by
Recovery
.
It can be any name, but it is recommend a name with only three letters in upper
case with an optional unit number to be consistent with other AmigaDOS device
names and to save type work to Shell users.
Option argument name:
DEVICE_NAME
Short name:
DEV
Valid option values: any sequence upto 30 characters except for characters
:
and
/
.
Default value:
REC
Example:
DEV=DEL0
VOLUME_NAME
option
This option determines what name is to attributed to the
volume
of the
device
mounted by
Recovery
.
It can be any name, but it is recommend a name with any continuous sequence of
letters.
Option argument name:
VOLUME_NAME
Short name:
VOL
Valid option values: any sequence upto 30 characters except for characters
:
and
/
.
Default value:
Recovery
Example:
VOL=Retrieval
BUFFERS
option
This option determines the amount of buffers AmigaDOS is to attribute to the
REC:
device
whilst running. Generally speaking the more the better (up to a limit). Note
that the more buffers that a
device
uses the less is available in terms of free memory to the system.
The memory size allocated for each buffer is the same as the size of the disk
block. Although each disk block size may vary, it usually is 512 bytes large
which the byte size of a sector for many types of disks. Since AmigaDOS 3.1 it
is possible to have blocks that occupy more that one sector.
The number of buffers for
Recovery
can be specified either in the tooltypes, the user interface window and even
by using the AmigaDOS Shell command
AddBuffers
.
The minimum amount of buffers is 2. If a smaller amount is specified,
Recovery
will use a number of buffers equivalent to the number of disk blocks that fit
into track for each disk being scanned.
The amount of buffers used is only allocated before each
device
is scanned. They will only be freed, when the scanned drive is freed also.
If there isn't enough memory to allocate the specified number of buffers,
Recovery
will try to allocate a smaller number till it finds an amount for which there
is enough memory.
If you want to tell
Recovery
to allocate the largest possible amount of buffers in order to improve scanning
performance, just specify a very large number, e.g. 1000000.
Consultation of the Amiga's manuals for usage of the shell command
AddBuffers
would be essential reading before changing this parameter.
Option argument name:
BUFFERS
Short name:
BUF
Valid option values: 0 or any value higher than 1.
Default value:
0
Example:
BUF=100
Usage - Device options -
18
Recovery
-A tool for retrieving deleted files from disks
Commodity options
Commodities are programs that intercept user input.
Recovery
also acts as a commodity to determine when its
hot-key
was pressed. When the user presses the
hot-key
,
Recovery
's user interface window will pop-up.
Recovery
works in the same way as any system commodity. This means that it has options
with standard names for commodity options. It can also be controlled through a
commodity window interface which is actually the same as the
Recovery
's user interface window.
These options control the way that
Recovery
interfaces with the Commodities part of the Amiga's operating system.
CX_POPUP
- Commodity pop-up option
This option determines whether
Recovery
will show its window when started.
yes
will cause the window to appear and
no
will cause
Recovery
to run in hidden mode when started.
Option argument name:
CX_POPUP
Short name:
POP
Valid option values:
yes, no
Default value:
yes
Example:
POP=no
CX_POPKEY
- Commodity pop-up key
This option determines which
key
will cause
Recovery
to show its commodity window interface. This may cause the window to open if
previously closed or to come to the front if previously covered by other
windows or not being displayed in the current front screen.
The
key
is usually a combination of keys. This can be changed if it clashes with
another commodity
hot-key
or if a different combination of keys is preffered.
If an invalid combination is specified for the pop-up key,
Recovery
will revert to its default pop-up key without issuing an error message to the
user. The pop-up key that has been used by
Recovery
is shown in the title of the user interface window.
If for some reason you forget what was the
hot-key
used to pop-up the commodity window interface, you can use the Amiga system's
commodity
Exchange
tool to signal
Recovery
to show its interface or simply run
Recovery
again.
Consultation of the Amiga's manuals will yield further insight into the usage
of
hot-keys
.
Option argument name:
CX_POPKEY
Short name:
KEY
Valid option values: any valid combination of keys.
Default value:
control alt r
Example:
KEY=lcommand shift 0
CX_PRIORITY
- Commodity priority
Commodity programs are notified about user input by the system. All the
commodities running are notified one after another acording to an order. That
order is determined by each commodity's priority value.
This options determines
Recovery
's own commodity prority value. Commodities with higher priorities are able to
intercept input before others with lower priorities.
Commodities like
Recovery
filter the kind that they are meant to intercept. In
Recovery
's case it is its
hot-key.
Commodities with lower priority will never know about same kind of input.
Consultation of the Amiga's manuals will yield further insight into the usage
of
priorities
.
Option argument name:
CX_PRIORITY
Short name:
CX_PRI
Valid option values: any value between -127 and 128
Default value:
0
Example:
CX_PRI=10
Usage - Commodity -
21
Recovery
-A tool for retrieving deleted files from disks
System options
Recovery
has several options to control the way it interface to the operating system.
Locale
LANGUAGE
Recovery
is fully localized, and it is ready be used in any of the supported languages.
This means that the all the text that the program displays can appear in
several different languages.
Use the Locale system preference editor to select the default languages. If
Recovery
doesn't yet support the selected language, the default built-in language will
be used.
System localization support was only introduced in AmigaDOS V2.1. This
LANGUAGE
option is meant only to specify the language to be used when system
localization support is not available. Otherwise this option will be ignored.
See
Technical notes - Locale
LANGUAGE
support
.
Option argument name:
LANGUAGE
Short name:
LANG
Valid option values: any language of the currently supported
Default value: no language, built-in default is used (english).
Example:
LANG=deutsch
PUBSCREEN
- Public screen
This option tells
Recovery
the name of a public screen where its windows will be opened.
If no name is supplied for this option or for some reason it was not possible
to open a window in that screen or there is no screen with the suplied name,
Recovery
will open its windows in the default public screen which is usually the
Workbench screen.
Option argument name:
PUBSCREEN
Short name:
SCR
Valid option values: any currently opened public screen name
Default value: no public screen name, Workbench screen is used
Example:
SCR=My public screen
TOOLPRI
- Tool task priority
The task priority value is used to arbitrate in a multi-tasking system like
Amiga's, which task preferencially gets to use the CPU. This means that if a
task has a certain priority, all the remaining tasks that have lower priority
will have to wait till that first task ends its job or goes to sleep.
Applications usually run with priority 0. If you set this option to an higher
value,
Recovery
will have most of the time the CPU preference over tasks with lower priority
till goes to sleep.
Saying that a task goes to sleep, means that it will be waiting for the system
to send it a signal telling it that some event that it was waiting for has just
happened. This is the case when for instance, a program is waiting for the user
to act upon the user interface window or some data to be read from a disk.
This options determines what priority
Recovery
task will run at. It is not very important and was only provided to be
consistent with other tools that have the same option. Since the default for
the priority is already 0, it is not important to change it.
Option argument name:
TOOLPRI
Short name:
PRI
Valid option values: any value between -128 and 127
Default value:
0
Example:
PRI=20
Usage - System options -
24
Recovery
-A tool for retrieving deleted files from disks
Outstanding features
Recovery never modifies the disk being scanned
Recovery
is absolutely safe to use as it never alters data on the
volume
being scanned, nor allows any other application to modify data on the
volume
while
Recovery
is scanning it.
This was done to both inspire trust in the user and provide failsafe access to
a possibly damaged disk.
See
Scanning a disk - Lock drive
section.
Use your favourite file management tool
The main advantage of
Recovery
, is its ability to act as an intermediate
device
, between any standard Amiga application and the actual storage units.
Since this is achieved using a virtual AmigaDOS
device
, that provides access to all the scanned files in a transparent way, the user
can still do any thing with those files except for write actions. Files can be
read, copied or even executed in a transparent way, as from a normal
volume
.
This facilitates the use of the Workbench, the Shell or any kind of directory
utility, for the exploration and recovery of files. Other programs can
co-operate in the file recovery process, e.g. backup programs which allow very
large files to be recovered to anywhere else, very easily.
Using
Recovery
and a hard disk backup program it would be possible to safely recover a file
that is larger than any one floppy disk. This is possible as most backup
programs will split the file over many floppies.
Another important consequence of this, is that it is possible (and very easy)
to recover files or even whole directory structures to another computer in the
computer's network. Of course, both computers have to be in the same network.
Support for the newer filesystems
Recovery
also retrieves data from the newer versions of the filesystem like
International and Directory Cached. This allows disks formated in any of the
newer file systems, to be read in a transparent way, even if the version of the
system on which
Recovery
is being run, does not support those file systems.
Recovery
also supports and scans disks which use multiple sectors per block. This
feature was introduced in AmigaDOS version 3.1 (V40).
See
Technical notes -Scannable disk types
section.
Headerless files can be recovered
Recovery
can also search for files which their
headers blocks
had been wiped or are unreadable because of some error. Headerless files can
be scanned for, if the
file system
used in the disk is one of the versions of the old
file system
. This includes the newer variants International and Directory Cached.
See
Scanning a disk - Search for headerless files
section.
Scanning progress is shown
While a disk in a drive is being scanned,
Recovery
always gives the user an idea of how much of the disk has already been scanned
by means of a fuel guage. There is also a percentage indicator and a timer
that shows an estimate of the remaining time to the end of the scanning
procedure.
See
Scanning a disk
section.
Fast search method
Recovery
can use when possible, a
fast search
method that only searches for files in a disk's free blocks, where the deleted
files are most likely to be found.
See
Scanning a disk - Search method
section.
Very low disk access overhead
Recovery
buffers
the most frequently read blocks, while both scanning a disk or reading file
data from it. This reduces to a minimum the disk access and preserves memory.
See
Scanning a disk - Device options Buffers option
section.
Drives being scanned can still be available for use
Recovery
can optionally be set to not inhibit the use of a device while scanning is in
progress. Though this still precludes writing data to that device, reading from
it can continue as if
Recovery
had never been started.
See
Scanning a disk - Lock drive
section.
Recovery can run under arduous memory conditions
Options can be set before scanning to cause
Recovery
to use the minimum of available system memory.
If the computer has enough memory, the options can be set to make the scanning
process faster.
See
Technical notes - Memory usage
section.
On-line Help
Recovery
provides on-line help to most of its window buttons and menus. Help buttons,
also appear in requesters where an important decision has to be made.
See
Technical notes - On-line help support
section.
Localization
Recovery
is fully localized even when run in system with earlier than Amiga OS 2.1. So
it is ready be used in any country with any of the supported languages.
See
Technical notes - Multi language support
section.
Limitations
Recovery
can only retrieve files from
track based disks
like floppies, hard disks, etc... but not from sequentially read storage
devices like tape streamers, nor virtual dynamic
devices
like the Amiga's
Ram Disk
.
Recovery
doesn't try to retrieve data from corrupt portions of a disk. If while scanning
a disk,
Recovery
encounters an unreadable block, a requester will open on screen. Via this
requester the user can instruct
Recovery
to skip the faulty block or abort the scan.
Recovery
cannot retrieve deleted files when AmigaDOS has reused the space they occupied
on the disk. If a file is accidentally deleted then
Recovery
should be started without delay!
In disks formated with
old file system,
file blocks have redundant information, that makes possible to double check if
that block really belongs to the file as well the data in that block is
corrupt. In disks formated with
fast file system
, each block is completely filled with the file data and so this redundant
information is no longer available. Because of this, it is not possible to
check if a
fast file system
disk block was corrupted. This is also the reason why
Recovery
can't find any
headerless files
in
fast file system
formated disks.
Recovery
uses the available memory to store information about scanned files. There can
be problems during the
scanning process
if there are too many files and too little memory to store information in. In
this scenario,
Recovery
can be set to conserve as much memory as possible.
See
User interface window - Low memory setup
section.
Recovery
currently ignores any scanned file or directory link blocks, as these are just
blocks that contain reference to the real file or directory
header block
that is somewhere else in the disk.
Recovery
also doesn't try to correct a problem with Workbench, still present in all
versions upto 3.1, where it doesn't check if a directory really exists when it
finds its drawer icon file alone.
Outstanding features -
26
Recovery
-A tool for retrieving deleted files from disks
Trouble shooting
Q.
What should I do when
Recovery
says that the disk scanning operation failed with a
Not enough memory available!
message?
A.
See the
User interface window - Low memory setup
and
Technical notes - Memory usage
sections.
Q.
How do I free a drive when I have finished scanning it with
Recovery
?
A.
See the
Freeing a drive
section.
Q.
What should I do if
Recovery
says that the drive I want to free is still being used?
A.
See the
Device in use
section.
Q.
How do I quit
Recovery
?
A.
See
User interface window - Quit button and menu item
section.
Q.
What should I do if I forget the hot key used to pop-up the
Recovery
commodity interface?
A.
See
Usage -
CX_POPKEY
- Commodity pop-up key
section.
Q.
What should I do if
Recovery
says that the disk in the drive is write protected?
A.
See
Usage -
LOCK_DRIVE
section.
Q.
What should I do
Recovery
says that it couldn't find a valid disk type identifier?
A.
See the
Technical notes - Scannable disk types
section.
Q.
What should I do if it seems there isn't any deleted files although the
Deleted_files
or
Lost_files
Workbench drawers still appear?
A.
Sometimes a file or a directory may have been deleted but its icon file may
not exist or simply might not appear as deleted. Make sure that the Workbench
shows all files in the current drawer you are examining. See your Workbench
manual.
In case of low memory...
If your computer runs out of memory during the scanning process, you can gain
extra memory by freeing any previously scanned drives. See about
free drive
interface function.
If you still encounter memory problems, you can switch off some search options
to again decrease the memory that
Recovery
will need. You can do this easily by selecting (from the user interface window
options menu) the
Low memory setup
menu option. If
Recovery
still has problem completing a scan due to the lack of available memory then
you can always split the retrieval of files in two or more parts, by using
different
search file patterns
each time the disk is scanned.
For instance you can set the search pattern to
[a-l]#?
for the first scan (and recover any necessary files) and for a second scan you
can use the opposite search pattern to recover any remaining files with
~([a-l]#?)
as search pattern.
Freeing a scanned drive
When data recovery is complete, the drive can be freed for normal system usage
by one of three possible methods:
- In the user interface window, select the respective drive in the
Scanned drives
list view, and then push the
Free drive
button.
- In the
REC:Scanned_Drives
directory, delete the file with the same name of drive to be freed.
-
Quit
Recovery
.
Recovery
can only free a drive when it is no longer being used by other applications
through
REC:
device
.
Make sure if the scanned disk was software
write protected
by
Recovery
before it was scanned, it is then physically unprotected or else the system
won't unprotect it.
If
Recovery
is being run on an Amiga running Amiga OS 3 or higher, and the system
encounters a low memory situation,
Recovery
will try to free all the scanned drives that are not being used without
informing the user. Using the
low memory setup
menu item, also makes
Recovery
to try to free all scanned drives.
See
Scanning a disk - Lock drive
,
Device in use
and
User Interface window - Low memory setup
sections.
Device In Use
Any program that has a
lock
on the directory created by
Recovery
in
REC:Drives
will prevent that drive being freed.
The Workbench via its open windows, the Shell via its current directory, or
other programs that can list a, read from, or save to a directory will
lock
the last one used. This is sufficient to stop
Recovery
freeing a drive.
All windows pertaining to
REC:Drives/xxx
where
xxx
is the drive in question and below must be closed. All Shell processes must be
set to have another device or volume as their current directory or must be
quit. The same is true of other applications. If in doubt then quitting
applications you think are locking the drive should free all the locks on it.
It is possible that a faulty application may retain a
lock
for file or a directory from
REC:
device after it has exited or crashed. This will effectively prevent Recovery
from quitting.
Trouble shooting -
31
Recovery
-A tool for retrieving deleted files from disks
Technical notes
Workbench support
To support Workbench,
Recovery
provides icons for directories and files that it creates in the
Recovery:
volume
.
This facility can be controlled with the option
PROVIDE_ICONS
. This option can be also set in the user interface window
Options
menu.
Recovery
searches through directories for these icon files in the following order:
PROGDIR:Icons/
,
ENV:sys/
,
ENVARC:sys/
where
PROGDIR:
is the directory path of
Recovery
program file.
Recovery
tries to find icons with the names
def_Disk.info
for the
volume
icon,
def_Drawer.info
for drawer icon and
def_Project.info
for project icons.
If no icons files where found in the above directories then
Recovery
will use built in icon images.
Multi language support
Recovery
supports language localization using Amiga standard methods, in all supported
versions of Amiga operating system.
Although localization was only introduced in Amiga OS version 2.1, localization
is still available if
Recovery
is run within earlier versions of the OS. In this case, the user's preferred
language must be specified with the
LANGUAGE
option, or else the built-in default language will be used.
For each of the supported languages, there is the respective catalog file in a
sub-directory in the same directory where
Recovery
is started. The path is:
PROGDIR:Catalogs/
LANGUAGE
/Recovery.catalog.
The
LANGUAGE
directory name is the same as the
Recovery
's
LANGUAGE
option or the selected locale language system preferences. If for instance the
LANGUAGE
was set to
deutsch
then the corresponding catalog file must be found in either the following
paths:
PROGDIR:Catalogs/deutsch
LOCALE:Catalogs/deutsch
The installation procedure doesn't put the language catalog files in this last
path.
See
System options - Locale language
.
On-line help support
Recovery
uses AmigaGuide hypertext system to provide context dependant on-line help.
On-line is also localized.
Besides help buttons and the help menu item, it is possible to have context
dependant help by pressing the
Help
key with the mouse pointer over a button, gadget or menu item in the user
interface window.
If for some reason AmigaGuide is not available, alternative information windows
will appear instead.
AmigaGuide based on-line help support will only work if at least version 33 of
amigaguide.library
is available. Use AmigaDOS command
Version amigaguide.library
to check what if and what version of AmigaGuide is available.
The normal
Recovery
installation procedure tries to install the AmigaGuide if it is not currently
installed.
Memory usage
Recovery
uses an amount of available memory to store information about the scanned
files and directories on a drive. The amount of memory used is more or less in
proportion to the size of the disk.
It is recommended that the user should partition the hard disk in such a way as
to ease the later use of
Recovery
if a file has accidentally been deleted.
Although
Recovery
's memory usage depends mostly on the number files and directories the user has
stored in a disk, partitioning a hard disk into smaller, more manageable,
chunks will limit the number of files and directories that can be fitted into
each partition and hence speed up the scanning process taking less memory to
hold the scanned disk's directory tree.
Most of the options available through the
Recovery
user interface window, are meant to allow the user to limit program memory
usage. Use
Low memory setup
menu option to switch off some options to minimize memory usage.
See
User interface window - Low memory setup
section.
If
Recovery
is being run in a computer with Amiga OS 3 or higher, and the system is low in
memory
Recovery
will try to free all the scanned drives that are not being used.
Scannable disk types
Currently,
Recovery
is only able to scan disks which are of AmigaDOS type. It determines that disk
type by reading some special reserved sectors at the beginning of the disk or
partition being scanned.
The type identifier consists of 4 bytes forming a longword, that are the first
bytes of those reserved sectors.
An AmigaDOS disk type identifier must have the first 3 bytes with the letters
'D', 'O' and 'S' respectively. The last letter is used to determine the type of
the
file system
used in the disk.
In general, if the number in this fourth byte is even, the
file system
is the old file system, if it's odd it is the fast file system.
So we have:
'D', 'O', 'S', 0 - Original old file system
'D', 'O', 'S', 1 - Original fast file system
'D', 'O', 'S', 2 - International old file system
'D', 'O', 'S', 3 - International fast file system
'D', 'O', 'S', 4 - Directory cached old file system
'D', 'O', 'S', 5 - Directory cached fast file system
If the first reserved sector is unreadable or the disk type identifier was none
of those shown above, a requester will appear, prompting the user to indicate
whether old file system or fast file system should be assumed as the disk file
system.
Both could be tried, but only one is right. If the wrong one is chosen, files
may appear as corrupted. In that case, the disk should be rescanned, but the
other file system should be selected when asked again.
If
Recovery
says that an unknown disk type identifier was found, it is not very likely
that the disk is an AmigaDOS disk and most probably no files will appear. This
may still occur though, as the first disk block may have been corrupted but not
the rest of the disk.
Device level reading errors
Recovery
uses Amiga
exec.library
functions to read each device to be scanned. It is assumed that each disk or
partition's associated Exec device behaves like the
trackdisk.device
.
All the device reading error numbers that
Recovery
reports, are also assumed to mean the same as if the drive being access is
like a
trackdisk.device
based floppy.
The meaning of those errors is listed here as quoted from the programming
include files
<devices/trackdisk.h>
and
<exec/errors.h>
.
Name
no.
short description
TDERR_NotSpecified
20
general catchall
TDERR_NoSecHdr
21
couldn't even find a sector
TDERR_BadSecPreamble
22
sector looked wrong
TDERR_BadSecID
23
ditto
TDERR_BadHdrSum
24
header had incorrect checksum
TDERR_BadSecSum
25
data had incorrect checksum
TDERR_TooFewSecs
26
couldn't find enough sectors
TDERR_BadSecHdr
27
another "sector looked wrong"
TDERR_WriteProt
28
can't write to a protected disk
TDERR_DiskChanged
29
no disk in the drive
TDERR_SeekError
30
couldn't find track 0
TDERR_NoMem
31
ran out of memory
TDERR_BadUnitNum
32
asked for a unit >
NUMUNITS
TDERR_BadDriveType
33
not a drive that trackdisk groks
TDERR_DriveInUse
34
someone else allocated the drive
TDERR_PostReset
35
user hit reset; awaiting doom
Other general Exec device errors
Name
no.
short description
IOERR_OPENFAIL
-1
device/unit failed to open
IOERR_ABORTED
-2
request terminated early [after
AbortIO()
]
IOERR_NOCMD
-3
command not supported by device
IOERR_BADLENGTH
-4
not a valid length (usually
IO_LENGTH
)
IOERR_BADADDRESS
-5
invalid address (misaligned or bad range)
IOERR_UNITBUSY
-6
device opens ok, but requested unit is busy
IOERR_SELFTEST
-7
hardware failed self-test
Technical notes -
34
Recovery
-A tool for retrieving deleted files from disks
Concepts
Volume
A Volume is a disk inserted into a disk
device
.
For example
Extras4.0
is the name of a volume that can be inserted into a floppy drive.
Another may be
Ram Disk
- the non-permanent simulated disk in the computers memory.
A disk inserted into a disk-drive (floppy or permanently fitted hard drive)
will have a volume name as well as a device name.
A volume can be renamed eg
Ram Disk
can be renamed to
Disk In Ram
.
Device
An AmigaDOS Device is a sort of interface capable of having data written to it
or read from it.
For example
DF0:
is the name of a device that can receive floppy disks. It can be written to
and read from.
Another may be
RAM:
- the non-permanent simulated disk in the computers memory. This too has read
and write capability.
A disk inserted into a disk-drive (floppy or permanently fitted hard drive)
will have a
volume
name as well as a device name.
Other examples of devices may be:
HD0:
Where Workbench is held for hard disk users.
HD1:
Work storage for hard disk users.
RAD:
A reset proof Ram disk.
DF1:
A second disk drive (if you have one).
PRT:
The output only printer device.
SER:
The serial port (read and write)
PAR:
Read and write capable parallel device.
Only devices capable of storing data on a
track by track
basis will be able to be scanned by
Recovery
. Printer ports, parallel and serial devices cannot be scanned. Also, sadly,
the
RAM:
device cannot be scanned by
Recovery
because it is dynamic in nature. This means that it shrinks and expands
depending upon how much data is stored within it.
Remember that although
RAD:
is a virtual device, it is also a
track based device
simulated in the computer memory. So,
Recovery
can still retrieve files from
RAD:
as well.
When this document refers to a
drive
it means a device capable of
track based
read and write.
Drive
A Drive is a
device
capable of storing data for later recovery. It can be written to and read from
by normal Amiga applications.
Recovery
can only scan disks in
track based devices
.
Track based device
A track based device is usually a physical
device
like floppies, hard-drives and CD-ROMs, which are capable of reading or
writing data in disks layered in tracks. Usually, the information is divided in
sectors inside each track.
Due to versatility of AmigaDOS, it is possible to simulate a track based device
to store files for instance in the computer memory like the
RAD:
device
. Although
RAM:
is also a simulated
device
in the computer memory,
Recovery
can't scan it to search for files, because the information stored in
RAM:
is not layered as in disk tracks.
File system
AmigaDOS file system is the system that AmigaDOS uses to manage information of
files and directories in a disk.
There are two basic types of the AmigaDOS file system: the
OldFileSystem
and the
FastFileSystem
.
Old File System
OldFileSystem
(OFS) is the original Filing system used by the Amiga range of computers.
Fast File System
FastFileSystem
(FFS) is the newer type of filing system that was introduced with the release
of Amiga OS 1.3. FFS allows more data to be stored on a given disk. The gain in
storage capacity is at the sacrifice of an invisible form of file continuity
checking. This goes mostly un-noticed to the user, who only sees more storage
and marginally quicker file accessing.
The lost continuity checking of FFS means that
Recovery
cannot retrieve sections of files without
header blocks
. OFS has no problems with these.
Newer still File Systems
Since AmigaDOS 3, other options have been available for filing systems.
Although there are basically based on OFS and FFS, they are more efficient and
functional.
Directory cacheing
is where storage is sacrificed for directory access speed.
International
is where file names cater better for international characters.
Since the release 3.1 of AmigaDOS, it is possible to use more than one sector
per disk block. This feature improves the performance of disk operations within
directories that have large amounts of files and sub-directories.
Alien File Systems
With latter releases of the operating system, Amiga is able to read and write
disks which use different file systems than any of those referred above.
Those file systems were originally used in other types of computers that use
MS-DOS or Apple's MacIntosh DOS.
The current version of
Recovery
is not yet able to retrieve any data from disks that use those alien file
systems.
Lock
Lock is the name that is given to a reference that AmigaDOS uses internally to
both locate a file or a directory in a
volume
and to protect it from being overwritten or removed from the
filing system
.
Recovery
will only exit (or allow you to
free a drive
) if there are no associated locks on the drive.
An opened file, implicitly sets up a lock, preventing it to be deleted.
Therefore, all relevant opened files should be closed to allow
Recovery
to either exit or allow a device to be freed.
See
Trouble shooting - Freeing a drive
section.
Disk bitmap
When files are written in a
volume
, its
file system
must have a way to determine which of the disk's blocks are available for use.
This information is available in a set of special blocks in the
volume
that maps the disk's free blocks.
Each bit of each byte of those bitmap blocks that is set to '1', means that the
respective block in the
volume
is free for use. This is why that set of blocks is named bitmap.
When a
volume
is found
unvalidated
, it means that the information present in the bitmap blocks does not
correspond to the real usage of the
volume
blocks by the files and directories, meaning the bitmap is not valid.
A
volume
is usually found
unvalidated
when for some reason it was not possible to update the bitmap blocks after a
write access to the
volume
. This may happen if the computer is reset or turned off during a an incomplete
write or delete operation on the
volume
.
If a
volume
is found
unvalidated
, the
file system
will try to validate by rescanning the whole
volume
directory tree structure to find out which blocks are in use.
The validation process is done automatically if the respective
file system
process finds the
volume
unvalidated
. It may take a while depending on the number of files and directories in the
volume.
The validation process may fail if the disk's directory tree structure is
corrupt or unreadable. At this time the system doesn't allow any data to be
written, updated or deleted from the
unvalidated
disk.
Header blocks
An header block is a block in the volume that the
file system
uses to store attributes of files or directories. For instance, the name, the
creation date, protection bits, file comments an the location of each sub block
are stored in the header block. Sub blocks can be the list of data blocks for
a file or the list of header blocks for a child directory.
If, for some reason, a file header block is unreadable or has been overwritten,
the recovery process for files will be harder.
See
Scanning a disk - Headerless files
section.
Concepts -
40
Recovery
-A tool for retrieving deleted files from disks
Introduction
DSBackup
is a tool that enables the user to backup information about the structure of
an AmigaDOS formated disk. Once saved in another disk, this information may be
restored later. That might be the case when because of an accident, the disk
structure information present in the disk itself, is corrupted.
The disk structure information may be saved in two forms. It can be a mountlist
file or an IFF RDB (
Rigid Disk Block
) file.
A mountlist is a text file that is used by AmigaDOS when mounting a device. An
AmigaDOS device can be for instance a disk partition.
A mountlist consists of several keywords with the names of each relevant
parameter of the AmigaDOS device, and the respective value to be. Mountlists
are interpreted by the AmigaDOS
Mount
command to make the device being mounted available to the system.
An IFF RDB file is a custom IFF file that stores all the information contained
in a disk's
Rigid Disk Block
. A
Rigid Disk Block
is a block of information stored in the begining of a disk that can be
partitioned.
When the computer boots, the disk's auto-boot driver tries to read the
Rigid Disk Block
information from the disk. If that information is found and is valid (not
corrupted), the disk's partitions are mounted and the system can boot from one
of the partitions.
If the
Rigid Disk Block
is corrupted because of some accident, booting from the disk won't be possible
and the disk data won't be accessible. This is the time to use
DSBackup
to restore a previously saved
Rigid Disk Block
.
Introduction -
46
DSBackup
-A tool for backup and restore disk structure information
Usage
Start
DSBackup
from either Workbench or Shell.
DSBackup
main window opens displaying initially a list of AmigaDOS drives.
Selecting one of the drives and hitting the
Show
button opens another window that displays several parameters of that drive and
allows the respective mountlist to be saved to a file.
Switching the radio button in the main window to
Device units
switches the lists to display all the phisycal device units that can hold
AmigaDOS formated disks.
Selecting one of the device units and hitting the
Show
button, if that device unit holds a disk that has a valid
Rigid Disk Block
, another window opens displaying several parameter about that
Rigid Disk Block
.From that window you can save the
Rigid Disk Block
to an IFF RDB file or verify if a previously saved
Rigid Disk Block
matches the currently present in that device's unit.
From the main window you can also tell the program to restore a previously
saved
Rigid Disk Block
to an IFF RDB file. Each IFF RDB file holds enough information about the
device unit from which the
Rigid Disk Block
was saved. Usually only hard-disks have
Rigid Disk Blocks
, but notice that some controllers do not support the Commodore's
Rigid Disk Block
standard format, and so they are not supported by
DSBackup
.
After loading the IFF RDB in memory, a small window requester opens displaying
that device's unit information read from the IFF RDB file. That information can
be changed in that requester, if it is the case for instance when the disk was
moved to different device unit.
After succesfully restoring the
Rigid Disk Block
into the disk, the user is prompted reboot the computer to let the system
recognise the newly restored disk's
Rigid Disk Block.
Usage -
47
DSBackup
-A tool for backup and restore disk structure information
Options
DSBackup
has several options that can be specified when being started.
When started from the Amiga's Command Shell, these options are listed
after name of the program, as in this example:
DSBackup CREATE_ICONS=no TOOLPRI=5
When started from the Workbench the options are retrieved by
DSBackup
from its icon. Use
Information
item from Workbench's
Icons
menu after having selected
DSBackup
's Icon. The options are maintained in the list of
Tool Types
in the Information window.
Whether
DSBackup
is used from the Shell or the Workbench, its options have the same name and
achieve the same effect. Note that all options names must be of the form
OPTION NAME=OPTION VALUE
.
Although all options names are long and explicit, they also have shorter alias
to save on finger wear and tear. The example above showed how to set
DSBackup
to not create icons for files it saves and sets priority of its task to 5.
The short name for
CREATE_ICONS
is
ICONS
, so
ICONS=no
would also have achieved the same thing.
DSBackup
will use defaults if there are any options missing when it is started. Most
of the time
DSBackup
's options will not need to be changed from the default, so they don't have to
be specified.
Locale
LANGUAGE
DSBackup
is fully localized, and it is ready be used in any of the supported languages.
This means that the all the text that the program displays can appear in
several different languages.
Use the Locale system preference editor to select the default languages. If
DSBackup
doesn't yet support the selected language, the default built-in language will
be used.
System localization support was only introduced in AmigaDOS V2.1. This
LANGUAGE
option is meant only to specify the language to be used when system
localization support is not available. Otherwise this option will be ignored.
Option argument name:
LANGUAGE
Short name:
LANG
Valid option values: any language of the currently supported
Default value: no language, built-in default is used (english).
Example:
LANG=deutsch
PUBSCREEN
- Public screen
This option tells
DSBackup
the name of a public screen where its windows will be opened.
If no name is supplied for this option or for some reason it was not possible
to open a window in that screen or there is no screen with the suplied name,
DSBackup
will open its windows in the default public screen which is usually the
Workbench screen.
Option argument name:
PUBSCREEN
Short name:
SCR
Valid option values: any currently opened public screen name
Default value: no public screen name, Workbench screen is used
Example:
SCR=My public screen
TOOLPRI
- Tool task priority
The task priority value is used to arbitrate in a multi-tasking system like
Amiga's, which task preferencially gets to use the CPU. This means that if a
task has a certain priority, all the remaining tasks that have lower priority
will have to wait till that first task ends its job or goes to sleep.
Applications usually run with priority 0. If you set this option to an higher
value,
DSBackup
will have most of the time the CPU preference over tasks with lower priority
till goes to sleep.
Saying that a task goes to sleep, means that it will be waiting for the system
to send it a signal telling it that some event that it was waiting for has just
happened. This is the case when for instance, a program is waiting for the user
to act upon the user interface window or some data to be read from a disk.
This options determines what priority
DSBackup
task will run at. It is not very important and was only provided to be
consistent with other tools that have the same option. Since the default for
the priority is already 0, it is not important to change it.
Option argument name:
TOOLPRI
Short name:
PRI
Valid option values: any value between -128 and 127
Default value:
0
Example:
PRI=20
CREATE_ICONS
If this option is set
DSBackup
will create icons for all the files being saved.
The icon template file for mountlists id def_mountlist.info and for the IFF RDB
is def_RDB.info.
DSBackup
searches through directories for these icon files in the following order:
PROGDIR:Icons/
,
ENV:sys/
,
ENVARC:sys/
where
PROGDIR:
is the directory path of
DSBackup
program file.
Option argument name:
CREATE_ICONS
Short name:
ICONS
Valid option values: yes, no
Default value: yes
Example:
ICONS=no
Options -
48
DSBackup
-A tool for backup and restore disk structure information