sfssalv fails to recover directories from a damaged partition

i just discovered today that one of my partitions disappeared from the desktop. it is seen as unformated maybe due to rdb failure. the data system can be completely detected by sfssalv as far as i was able to judge it. but after running recovery onto another clean partition the directories cannot be opened anymore. in oposit to data in root that are accessible without problem. the space used by the data on this new partition seems to indicate that in fact everything has been recovered. it is alltogether about 1.3gb. i wonder if there is some bug in the program really, it seems it is put together a little carelessly at least what concerns gui.

@wawa

maybe you need to use the c:protect command to set the files and directories to +r (readable).

go to a shell and cd to the recovered files directory and type:
protect #? +r all

Edit: Actually, if thats the problem, you might want to set them to protect #? +rwed all

@jahc:
no, since the system assumes only the files in the root are present protect with whatsoever arguments also applies only to them. sigh.

@wawa
Well, at least you can fall-back on your old backup.... right?

@ChrisH

the situation is not that critical. i should have the most of the data backed up somewhwere. however i would like to be able to recover the partition using appropriate tool, that seems to contain bugs alas. i will try to contact joerg via mail, lets see what he sez.)

@wawa

Quote:If it's a FFS2 partition, nothing else prevents accessing directories without "r" bit set, try
protect #?+r
protect #?/#? +r
protect #?/#?/#? +r
protect #?/#?/#?/#? +r
...
instead. Maybe the "e" bit has to be set instead, or both have to be set, I don't know what exactly FFS2 uses.

@joerg

sorry to say, even partition magic under os4 with sfs partition as a target had the same effect. some 1.3 gig data are being recovered, of which only that in the root directory are accessible. various attempts of using protect command to unlock the directories didnt succeed. may it be the directory tree is damaged beyond repair but 1.3gb of what data are sfssalv and partition magic recovering then, since they spit only a few warnings underway and continiue to what seems to be some succesful end?

@wawa

Quote:What error exactely do you get when you try to access the directories, for example with "List directory" or "CD directory" in a shell?

@joerg

except for 2 also incomplete directories the dir command from shell doesnt show any other, only the icon files for the missing ones. i can also enter these present dirs via workbench. i had not realised it before.

@wawa

Quote:You wrote "the space used by the data on this new partition seems to indicate that in fact everything has been recovered. it is alltogether about 1.3gb.". Does that mean there are about 1.3 GB data in the root dir, and there wasn't much in sub directories?

You can try again with the mode set to "All/Deep" in the 3rd tab, usually that way you get much worse results but in a few cases, especially very destroyed partitions, it works better, and in your case it can't get much worse. If that doesn't help either too much data on the partition is destroyed and recovering more from it isn't possible.

@joerg
no, of the 1.3gb data only a fraction lies in the root directory. i tried deep before as far i recall but will give it another run.