Recovering HD partition map...

[nathan@cco.caltech.edu (Nathan Mates)]

This happened to me today; any help would be appreciated.

   It seems as if something's happened to my scsi chain. At first, I
couldn't boot; the RF/SCSI (Rev C, Rom 3.01a) simply complained about
a 'incompatible config data' with no devices online. Pushing cables
around to make sure things were connected yielded me two boots
apparently at random; they both ended with a $0027 error (I/O error)
at various places in the boot process.

   Opening up my system, I played around with the 2 devices on it:
Maxtor 235MB HD (id=4) and Floptical (ID=3).

   With just the floptical connected, its light never goes off, which
seem to indicate that it's having problems with things. This happens
when its connected and not, if a disk is in it (it makes the right
clicking noises, but still does nothing) or not, and if termination
is on or not from the RamFAST

   With just the HD connected, the RamFAST seems to have lost all of
the partition info, which I'm most concerned about. There are no
partitions in the slot/drive list, and going to SCSI utils gives me
following info:

Device Name: MAXTOR 7245-SCSI
Serial Number                  [Blank]
Device Size: 239744K
Space Avail: 32768K

SCSI ID 4
Interleave 1:1
Cylinders 0
Sectors/Track 0
Heads 0
Defect List Size 256

   Should the cylinders, sectors & heads all be 0? This sounds mighty
suspicious. Also, I don't remember the defect list size from before,
but I think it wasn't 256 (probably 0).

   The partitions are listed as:
CVTech.ID4.A    4MB  Not Active
CVTech.ID4.B   32MB  Not Active
CVTech.ID4.C   32MB  Not Active
CVTech.ID4.D   32MB  Not Active
CVTech.ID4.E   32MB  Not Active
CVTech.ID4.F   70MB  Not Active

   Before, it was 20/32/32/32/32/80 (the last was simply the remainder
of the drive). Now, it seems as if the RamFAST's info on the drive has
been toasted, as the size of 2 partitions is wrong, and parts of the
drive are apparently unallocated. Is it possible to restore the
partiton map back to normal, and recover the data from the HD?

  I'd much, much rather prefer to restore data than reformat
everything (can you say 'no backup of recent projects'?). Any help
would be much appreciated.

Nathan Mates
-- 
* Nathan Mates   http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~nathan/               *
* Ftp humor archiver: ftp to cco.caltech.edu, look in pub/humor     *
* "Always listen to experts. They'll tell what can't be done, and   *
*  why. Then do it."  -- Robert A. Heinlein, Lazarus Long           *