How to transfer a smaller SD card/hard Drive to a bigger SD card/Hard Drive ?

[Dizzy33]

Hello,

I have an A1200 with kickstart 3.2.2 on which I will receive soon a 8 Gb SD card which will act as a hard drive. This 8 Gb SD card will have a Workbench and games on it. I would like to transfer all the content (including Workbench) on a 32Gb SD card (with a 32Gb partition).
Is there a way to do this using WinUAE or with another method ?

Thanks

[Boing-ball]

Hi,

Yes. WinUAE would be the better and faster method. Just get a SD Card reader (USB) type. Place the original SD card in and you can boot with that on WINUAE.
Then place the other SD card (32GB) in the SD card card reader.

The best practice would be.

1).. Get the 32GB card. Place in the card reader. Then using CMD command with Administrator rights type without the following without quotes “Diskpart” press return.

 2).. Then “ list disk” press return. Check on the list it sees the 32GB SD card. As the next bit will destroy data! So pick correctly or you may wipe the wrong disk!

3).. From the list use the command “select disk” so if your 32GB is showing as disk 3 you use the command “select disk 3”.

4).. Run “List disk” and check that an * is next to the correct disk.

5).. Now the dangerous part. Making sure you have selected the correct disk. Type “Clean”. This will wipe the contents of the disk selected. This should have been the 32GB SD card.

Now you can either place that SD card into your A1200 with a bootable 3.2 Install disk to use HDTOOLBOX to prep. Or WinUAE booting off the 8GB card and using HDTOOLBOX to prep and format the 32GB SD card.

[Dizzy33]

Thanks a lot for your informations, but how to copy the small SD card to the big one ? I mean I would like to copy the Workbench and everything else on the new SD card. Is there a tool which would allow to do that ?
Is that something that HDTOOLBOX can do ?

[Boing-ball]

HDToolBox only prepares the new SD card so that the Amiga can see it. I.e setting up the partitions and setting the filesystem up and the boot side.

To get the stuff off the 8GB to the 32GB is basically just copying everything over from the 8GB to the 32GB SD card once you have setup the partitions on the 32GB card using HDTOOLBOX.

A good tool to install and use (If it’s not already on  This 8GB SD card) is DirectoryOPUS (Or known as DOPUS).

Aminet.net has all this free stuff to download and install…

[Dizzy33]

Thanks a lot, anyway I think with this method, I will be obliged to install the Workbench manually, because just copying all files will not work I guess, the new SD card will not be bootable.
I just found a solution : it seems that with Winimage we can clone an Amiga CF/SD card. This is what I am searching for. But the only thing is that I do not know what will happen if I clone a smaller SD card to a bigger one. I guess the bigger one will have the exact same partition as the original, so there will be free space on it. I will have to find a way to create 2 partitions : a small partition, and a big one, and to let the clone be done on the small partition.

[Boing-ball]

Stop thinking in PC mode. Yes you can’t just copy a Windows 10 or 11 files to a bigger drive.

In Amiga land. Dopus will copy everything. Thus your new Sd card (32GB) will work. Just make the necessary sized partition. Call the partition something like SDDH0. Format the new partition. If the original is called System. Then make the new one System1.
Use Dopus to select and copy all from System to System1. Once done rename the System1 partition to System. Remove old SD and replace with new. Job done.

[AndyFC]

If you can prepare your new drive and set it to be bootable, then copying the files is relative easy. AmigaOS doesn't lock system files like Windows so you can copy system files from your live system whilst it's running. If you copy the files then the partitions can be different sizes.

You can use the copy command with CLONE option to keep all the file attributes. I created a small script called Quikbackup which gives a simple GUI for this purpose http://aminet.net/package/disk/bakup/QuickBackup. I created and used it when I had to swap out a failing mechanical drive for a Compact Flash.

[Dizzy33]

Thanks a lot to both of you, I'll try this method.

[Dizzy33]

To AndyFC, your backup tool seems great, I have one question :
it seems that you can do cloning with it, can you clone from one device to a larger one ?

[Boing-ball]

Stop thinking in PC mode. Yes you can’t just copy a Windows 10 or 11 files to a bigger drive.

In Amiga land. Dopus will copy everything. Thus your new Sd card (32GB) will work. Just make the necessary sized partition. Call the partition something like SDDH0. Format the new partition. If the original is called System. Then make the new one System1.
Use Dopus to select and copy all from System to System1. Once done rename the System1 partition to System. Remove old SD and replace with new. Job done.

This YouTube video may help you in the Diskpart and setting up partitions;

https://youtu.be/olRHScYz3KI?si=O4zj8e67DrAUQVLg

[AndyFC]

To AndyFC, your backup tool seems great, I have one question :
it seems that you can do cloning with it, can you clone from one device to a larger one ?

Thanks. Yes you can, it's simply a file copy tool. I regularly use it to back my boot partition up to a folder on another, larger drive.

[Dizzy33]

Thanks to all of you. Now I just need to wait to receive my SD cards to try your solutions.

[Dizzy33]

AndyFC, I tried to transfer your script to my emulated A500 in WinUAE. I did a drag and drop of the file to the WinUAE window. The file then does appear in the Workbench, but it is shown as a directory, not a file. So it seems that my file transfer method to UAE does loose the real file attributes.
What is the best method to transfer a file to an emulated Amiga in WinUAE ?
Sorry for these noob questions ...

[Dizzy33]

Finally please forget my question, I figured out how to proceed.

[nbache]

Well, somebody else might like the question answered.

What is the best method to transfer a file to an emulated Amiga in WinUAE ?

I usually use the Shared Folder. Windows sees it as C:\Users\Public\Documents\Amiga Files\Shared\Workbench - at least here. I'm using Amiga Forever, don't know if it's something specific for that or it's in all WinUAE installations. In the emulated Amiga it is seen as a "Shared" volume on WB.

Best regards,

Niels