Partitioning a real drive with WUAE and OS3.9

[Thomas]

When using Vista or Win7 you should disconnect and reconnect the drive after running HDToolbox for the first time, otherwise changes might not be saved to the drive.

Actually you should first clean the drive with DiskPart before you use it in WinUAE, then you can be sure that Windows knows that it is empty and keeps its fingers from it.

[Thomas]

Volume is not validaded.

There are two possible causes for this:

1. the partition is really too big for the version of FastFileSystem you use. You could try to increase the file system block size to bypass this.

2. you have not enough memory. Big partitions need a huge amount of memory at some point. It probably tries to generate the entire bitmap in memory before it stores it on disk. I have experienced that you need at least 8 MB of memory to format a 8GB partition. So for a 60 GB partition you might need at least 60 MB of memory.

Increasing the file system block size might help here, too, because it lowers the size of the bitmap.

Have you considered using SFS instead of FFS ?

[Thomas]

Instructions should be in the "full archive with tools and docs". http://strohmayer.org/

You should use SFS/00 for SmartFileSystem. CFS/00 means "stupid user sitting behind the keyboard". ;-)

[Thomas]

Go to Add/Update, remove the SmartFileSystem entry, click on Add and select the file (L:SmartFileSystem). Now a window appears where you can overwrite the identifier and version information. Overtype 43465300 by 53465300 and press enter. If you now go back to Change, you should have SFS/00 in the list.

The numbers are hexadecimal representations of ASCII values:

43 = C
46 = F
53 = S
00 = non-printable character

Therefore 43465300 stands for CFS/00 and 53465300 stands for SFS/00.

The section to read is in SFS_OLD.guide -> Installation -> Making SFS available for use.

The same procedure applies to every file system, only the identifier is different.

Likewise

44 = D
4F = O
53 = S

for the Amiga file system. The last byte determines the extra features:

01 = FastFileSystem
03 = FastFileSystem International
05 = FastFileSystem International + Directory Cache
07 = FastFileSystem with long file names (new in OS 4.0)

[Thomas]

Another thing is when I then go back into HDToolBox it displays the extra partition but when I click on it both that partition and DH3 are selected as if they are one partition and not 2. Strange.

This sounds like a bug in HDToolbox. I have heard that HDtoolbox sometimes creates overlapping partitions, but I never experienced it myself.

How did you start partitioning the HDD ? Did you choose one of the standard setups (1, 2, 4, 8 partitons) and then moved around the partitions HDToolbox created or did you delete all pre-installed partitions and created your own ones one after the other ?

Can you delete all partitions (except the first one if it's already filled with files), save the changes and then check what HDToolbox shows ? Can you delete the dh1_0 partition ?

If you don't get it sorted, please install tsgui, run it, select one partition of your hdd and choose "save RDB to file" from the menu. Attach the resulting file here or send it to me by e-mail, then I can examine and repair it.

Bye,
Thomas

[Thomas]

The boot partition can have any file system which is stored in the RDB.

"Wouldn't boot" is not enough information. Does the drive spin up ? Do partitions appear in the early startup menu ? Do you get any error message or just the insert-disk screen ? Is anything of the afrementioned different after you pressed Ctrl-A-A ?

[Thomas]

Sounds like a power problem. Is this in the desktop case with the original power supply ?