Another useful contribution from Stefan, an article that should help people with booting problems or lost disc access.

Disaster Recovery, Step 1

or how to rebuild the PMA when you only see: ERROR (code:  3 / filesystem corrupted
on a red screen during boot before the PMA switches itself off.

As many PMA users might know, the PMA's harddrive is formatted as one, primary FAT32 partition, using the full size of the HD. This changed a bit with the introduction of openPMA v0.2 (Giraffe), when a second, very small partition was added to the end of the harddisk (HD in the following description).

Anyway, the partition, the partition table on the HD itself and the FAT32 structure are essential parts of the boot process of the PMA. If this FAT32 partition doesn't exist anymore (e.g. deleted by accident), is corrupt, or the partition table of the HD is corrupt, you might see this during boot, just before the PMA switches itself off:

ERROR (code:  3 =============== filesystem corrupted.

If you see this error, it's wise to know where your recent (full) backup of the PMA is.

Other Archos devices (e.g. AV3x0) have a built-in (into the bootloader) formatting / partitioning tool that would have asked in this case "Do you like to format the HD now?". This doesn't exist on the PMA.

The problem here is that you can't access the PMA anymore (unless you already know the tricks described here), because the PMA will not connect as an USB device any longer when showing this error. Worse, within a couple of seconds, it switches itself off.

If you could force the PMA to connect as an USB device, you could easily create a new primary FAT32 partition, e.g. under Windows, with special programs like Paragon Partition Manager, Partition Magic or Swiss Knife. Please note that this deletes all the content on the PMA, so remember to do backups!

(Note: Using the build-in partion utility in Windows (speaking of XP only) won't work for FAT32 partitions of this size, it will most likely format it as an NTFS partition, unless you carefully set the right options there or change it later on. Sorry, but I haven't tried it myself from within Windows XP's utility, so I really can't comment on it in detail. Fdisk from older Windows versions is out of question, because it can't see the USB connection.)

But, luckily, the PMA has a built-in way to keep it alive and force it to be recognized as an USB device, even if the partition isn't there or is corrupted and shows "Error code 3".

Here's How:

1. switch off the PMA (best via reset pin hole)
   
   
2. connect USB cable
   
   
3. switch the PMA on by pressing and holding the PLAY button. Hold it down until the PMA is recognized as USB device AND until you've finished recreating the primary FAT32 partition.
   
   
4. If the FAT32 partition is ready again, disconnect the PMA safely.
   
   
5. Switch the PMA off via reset pin hole and restart it the normal way. (Just stop holding the play button or a reset might not work here, still showing "error code 3" or "error code 7 - no system image found").
   
   
6. Now it should boot without an error message. Okay, it hangs, because there are no files and no OS on it.  But you can switch it off (via reset pin hole), connect the USB cable again, start the PMA and it's available as USB device. Now you can copy back all the files you need (e.g. from the Archos recovery.zip or your own backup). You may have to assign a drive letter to the PMA first (under Windows).

The next steps required are part of another article found here -- starting at section "What can go wrong?"

Holding / pressing the PLAY button all the time might be a little difficult at the first try. If it doesn't work the first time, just try again.

Please note that some pre-production models of the PMA don't have this "keepalive" mode while holding/pressing the PLAY button during boot. The only solution for these might be to rebuilt the FAT32 partition while the HD is pulled out of the PMA and connected to a standard 2.5" external HD (USB) enclosure.

Thanks to Thomas of openPMA.org for describing some details involved here and to Stephan for providing the content ...