UAE USB Amiga Hard Drive

[andy82i]

Hi all, Im wondering if anyone can help me out?

Im running UAE 1.1.1 on a laptop running XP & would like to use the hard drive from my A1200 on it. No idea why, just cos I want to. Im using a USB to IDE converter as i have no other IDE ports on the laptop. Windows knows the hard drive is there as it is displayed in system properties but UAE says it cant find it.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance

[Thomas]

Try to run WinUAE with the -disableharddrivesafetycheck command line option.

Bye,
Thomas

[andy82i]

Thanks Thomas!
WinUAE can now see the drive but HDToolBox says the drive needs installing & that this will delete everything on the drive. I really dont want it to do that!!
What do I do  :-?

[Thomas]

Try to check the drive with RDB-Salv or RDBRecov to see where the data is and why it is not seen. Perhaps the USB controller somehow differently translates the drive geometry or uses part of the drive for itself, leaving a different amount of blocks for the OS.

Bye,
Thomas

[andy82i]

Just tried both programs & they both fail to open the device giving me the error "unable to open uaehf.device"
The drive works no problem in my A1200 & shows me everything thats on it.
Must be something to do with the USB controller although Ive never had any problems with it in the past using Windows drives.

[Thomas]

Just tried both programs & they both fail to open the device giving me the error "unable to open uaehf.device"

Then you did something wrong. If HDToolbox can see the drive, those tools can either. Make sure you use the right unit number.

And I am quite sure that at least RDBRecov does not say "unable to open uaehf.device" but "unable to open uaehf.device unit n". I know that because I wrote it :-)

Must be something to do with the USB controller although Ive never had any problems with it in the past using Windows drives.

Did you connect those Windows drives in your Amiga and tried to mount the DOS partitions ? Are you sure that sharing a drive between the Amiga IDE controller and an USB IDE controller should work ? Perhaps there is nothing wrong with the USB controller. Perhaps (probably) it is just a matter of "works as designed".

Bye,
Thomas

[andy82i]

HDToolbox sees the Amiga drive as unit 0. I used this unit number for RDBRecov & RDBSalv. They both told me they are unable to open uaehf.device at this unit. I tried several different unit numbers just in case even though HDToolbox sees the drive as unit 0. I also tried RDBRecov using the LUN which gave me the same results.

I used the windows drives on my WinXP laptop & desktop with the USB IDE controller & also used them in a laptop itself using its own IDE controler with no problems. The Windows drives have not been in my Amiga. The USB IDE controller when used installs as "Scanlogic USB Storage Device" under the USB Controllers tab of device manager & installs the drive in it as a normal drive giving its full device name under the "disk Drives" section of the device manager.

I have no idea if using the USB IDE controller to use an Amiga drive in this way should work which is why Im asking for help with it on here. If it should not work like this then thats fair enough, I was just curious & exploring options.

[Thomas]

I still cannot believe that HDToolbox sees the drive and RDBRecov doesn't. Could you make a screenshot of HDToolbox showing the drive and of the CLI window after you ran RDBRecov.

Bye,
Thomas

[andy82i]

Having trouble posting the screenshots but have hade some success with RDBRecov!

I disabled all the windows drives in UAE & added the Amiga drive. HDToolbox now sees the drive as uaehf.device unit 2, LUN 0. Tried this in RDBRecov & it also sees the drive giving me:
SectorSize = 512
Cylinders  = 333
CylSectors = 1000
Allocated partition table for 100 entries

Although this doesnt match up with what HDToolbox can see:
Cylinders              = 1616
Heads                  = 16
Blocks per track       = 13
Blocks per cylinder    = 208
Total number of blocks = 336128
Blocks per cylinder    = 512
Park head where        = 1616

And Im still left unable to actually mount & use the drive.

[Thomas]

What does HDToolbox see when the drive is connected to the A1200 ?

Please run RDBRecov again with the values used by HDToolbox when run on the Amiga.

How many partitions are on the drive ? Which file system is used ?

Bye,
Thomas

[andy82i]

Just tried RDBSalv on UAE. It sees the drive as the size it should be but cant find any partitions. It also tells me "error: no RDSK found" when trying to read from the drive.
There are three partitions on the drive, System (about 20MB), Work (about 120MB) & Work 2 (about 20MB) & as far as I can remember the values shown by HDToolbox match the values shown when the drive is used in the A1200. I will try it in the Amiga tonight & let you know the results. The file system is FFS.

[andy82i]

HDToolbox is showing me exactly the same results when run on the Amiga. RDBRecov still shows me the same info as in UAE.
Sorry about the delay in posting this

[Thomas]

I would like to see a dump of the first few blocks of the drive. Could you run the following program once on WinUAE and once on the Amiga for comparison:

http://thomas-rapp.homepage.t-online.de/download/blockdump.lha

use it like

blockdump uaehf.device 2 0 16 >ram:dump

where 2 is the unit number of the drive as it is used by RDBRecov, too. 0 is the first block to read and 16 is the number of blocks to be read.

If the dumps are totally different, could you please try to find the blocks dumped by WinUAE on the drive when connected to the Amiga. I guess they come somewhat later on the drive and that's the reason why WinUAE cannot find the RDSK block. It's just cut off by the USB controller.

Bye,
Thomas