Help with backup

[thirtyonetenseventhree]

First of all big thanks to all of the folks running and contributing to this site, the info has been most helpful and has just saved my 20GB DMS. So thanks.

But my woes are not over; I'm sitting at a friend's PC (being a Mac user myself) trying to restore a 100GB DMS which was working fine until I tried to add some new tracks with Phatmac and my G3 powerbook lost power in the middle of the process. When I put the DMS into the box the green light flashes like mad and the red light stays on. I did a boot check with DMS Tools v 2.14 and it wrote a new boot file. I had just performed this on my other 20GB DMS which also wasn't working and it worked (hooray!)so I was optimistic that this would work for the 100 GB DMS. It didn't. I put it back in the cradle after the first failed attempt and ran boot check again - it said that it appears to be okay and that I should put it back in the box and give it time to boot. An hour later the green light is still flashing the same as before and "No CD Changer" appears in the head unit.

This is a problem unto itself but first and now that I have got the 20GB factory DMS working again I want to make a backup of this for the worst case scenario. This PC is running Vista so the backup function in DMS Tools does not work. I went down the prompt commad route and got as far as the PhatHack_Wizard_Log text bit where I am supposed to copy out the part after "created argument string of" - but this is nowhere to be found in the log. Can anyone advise where I go from here.

Secondly what should be my next move with the non-functioning 100GB DMS - I couldn't find an explanation about DMS repair does - is it unwise to run this on my 100GB DMS. If I can get my 20GB DMS backed up maybe I could take this risk. Any help or advice welcome. Thanks

[Terry_Kennedy]

This is a problem unto itself but first and now that I have got the 20GB factory DMS working again I want to make a backup of this for the worst case scenario. This PC is running Vista so the backup function in DMS Tools does not work. I went down the prompt commad route and got as far as the PhatHack_Wizard_Log text bit where I am supposed to copy out the part after "created argument string of" - but this is nowhere to be found in the log. Can anyone advise where I go from here.

Secondly what should be my next move with the non-functioning 100GB DMS - I couldn't find an explanation about DMS repair does - is it unwise to run this on my 100GB DMS. If I can get my 20GB DMS backed up maybe I could take this risk. Any help or advice welcome. Thanks

The first thing I'd suggest is to hack your Phatbox (if you haven't already). Once you've done that, any PATA notebook drive should be usable in the Phatbox and you won't get stuck in this situation again.

The "No CD Changer" is a bit odd - the part of the Phatbox that talks to the car is actually a flash memory chip and not the DMS, so I wouldn't expect to see this behavior from a DMS with problems. But if the other DMS works it is probably a safe bet that the Phatbox is fine.

I'll let one of the other folks who is more familiar with the PhatHack tools follow up with additional info.

[VorTechS]

Secondly what should be my next move with the non-functioning 100GB DMS - I couldn't find an explanation about DMS repair does - is it unwise to run this on my 100GB DMS. If I can get my 20GB DMS backed up maybe I could take this risk. Any help or advice welcome. Thanks

If you want to run the backup process, then make sure you are running the tools with elevated permissions (Run As Administrator). You should do this under Vista/Windows 7 anyway if you have not disabled UAC (User Access Control).

The disk access process will likely need this to function correctly.  In reality the only thing you ever want is the disk signature (I might have called it boot block for the tools purposes), and the hack procedure does this for you too.  To date, I've never had anyone ask me how to restore from a 'backup' for a legitimate reason.

As for the DMS that is not working, I'm presuming you fixed the DMS from a music point of view by re-running PhatMac and re-adding media?  
If not, you should do this first and try booting again.  With a power failure before the application has completed writing to the DMS it could well just be that you don't have valid 'index files' that the box uses to navigate the media.

If you have, then it's possible that there is some form of file corruption on the PHTSYS partition.  Running the DMS Repair (PHTSYS) will format that partition, re-download the selected firmware and system files, and populate the system partition correctly.  Remember to uncheck the option 'Reflash box', and if your box is not hacked be sure to use the option 'Install non-hacked firmware'.