PS2 HDDChecker

[TnA]

Well... A PC-Tool could probably tell us more.

Have you at any point in time used the "Expand" function on the +OPL-Partition?

 

[jolek]

I might be missing something, but where in HDDChecker there is an option to check S.M.A.R.T.?

 

[SSick]

Is this now integrated into FHDB 1.966?
I doubt FHDB is detecting the checker in the apps, so I'm assuming the HDD check is part of the boot process.

I've had this tool ruin 2 installations today.

A long standing FHDB installation I've just returned to, on a 256gb SATA SSD (PP.FHDB.APPS drive became empty and unwritable).

A fresh FHDB installation (literally done today, performed 2 boots) on a 2TB WD Blue drive after playing a single game in OPL and performing an IGR (This now hangs at a black screen on boot).
Fresh drive. Partitioning of this was done by wLaunchElf (ie all defaults). Resized the APPS drive to be 512mb. Ran OPL and let it make the +OPL drive. Resized that to 2gb. Performed no more operations (ie rest of drive is empty).
Rebooted, started up a game in OPL over SMB. Rebooted. BOOM. "13 files corrupt". "fixed" them. BOOM. Won't boot any more.

Most reboots report 13 or so files are "corrupted" and must be fixed.
Some boots have reported many thousands (13k or so).
Cancelling just reboots to the same dialog, ie. "fixing" _must_ be performed.

There's nothing wrong with these disks, but there's something seriously wrong with the logic in this tooling.

 

[Berion]

@SSick
HDDChecker shouldn't be use on 2TB drives.
fschk is used in case problems on bootstrap stage. This app is not related to HDDChecker.
Resizing partitions in uLE breaking APA.

 

[SSick]

I have HDDChecker on the drive but I haven't run it.
This is just booting the system up with FHDB.
It performs an fsck and literally nukes the system.
Is there no way to disable this?
A previous post admitted the HDDChecker logic was incorrect, I'm assuming these two tools share common code.
File systems are complex beasts, unless the program is precise it will just create more damage.

If not uLE HD Manager to resize partitions, then what?
Just to clarify, im using the latest wLaunchElf, not the original uLE.

 

[Berion]

Then nothing. Resizing never works properly, but was spotted many years after main developers gave up and now it is not top priority feature (many things are still broken in wLE). If Your FHDB installation don't contains APPS, then installer will not create this partition. If You really need it, make it by hand. And better way is prepare environment on PC by some toolkits.

Also I don't see any reason for "hdd0:/+OPL" (if You not using older OPL versions of course, but since 1.2.0 will come out, there will be no reasons anyway to stick to ancient code). Put all OPL resources in "hdd0:/__common/OPL/" (supported since 1.1.0), and remember to create config for this so OPL will not create automatically +OPL.

If You delete fschk from __system, it will not be invoked, but I'm not sure if this not makes problems with system initialization. The best solution is to... kept not damaged APA chain. :P

 

[SSick]

Hmm ok, this gives me some options.
Thanks for the reply.

So there's no tooling on the PS2 that can be trusted to resize partitions at all?
FHDB Installer creates partitions on an unformatted HDD. Do you know if it's possible to change how large the partitions it creates are or is that baked into the elf?

 

[Berion]

FHDB stuff is not related to HDDChecker. Anyway, as I said, do not put in APPS any programs or just do not add APPS folder at all, and FHDB will not create this (useless) partition.

And no, FHDB do not creating partitions on unformatted HDD because it is not possible. It formatting it first, then creating partitions which are needed. But all of this You can do on PC, including FHDB installing (which means putting files in proper places under proper names and adding bootloader inside "hdd0:/__mbr").

None of the PS2 side apps can properly resize partitions.

Sizes are hardcoded in the installer. There is no config file etc. to control those values.