Format Compact Flash with winuae

[Thomas]

First in Windows run diskpart and enter

list disk (remember the number of the CF card in the list)
select disk n (replace n by the number of the CF card)
clean
exit

then right-click on WinUAE and select "run as administrator".

Now add harddrive should no longer be greyed out and the CF card should appear as empty.

You should use WinUAE 2.3.3, it no longer needs that harddrivesafetycheck thing.

[Thomas]

You don't need this wipedisk thing. It's just silly to wipe a flash memory card because every unnecessary write access reduces its life time.

All you need to do on the Windows side is the diskpart clean as described above. After that the CF card is considered empty by Windows and everything else is done inside WinUAE. If HDToolbox does not see the CF card, then it is a configuration error. Either WinUAE or HDToolbox is not configured correctly.

Make sure that there is an equal sign in SCSI_DEVICE_NAME=uaehf.device and that there are no brackets around this line and no additional space characters at the end of the line or around the equal sign.

Also make sure that controller is set to UAE when adding the harddrive.

[Thomas]

I have the CF recognised in winuae but when i come to format it it just says I/O error 28, or I/O error 5.

Make sure you have r/w checked in add harddrive window.

The 2gb CF card is now unformattable in windows 7 and i think i am going to take the card to my local CF dealer for him to reformat it. Surely it can't be right for windows to see the card as 0 bytes when you double click on it but as 1.9gb in disk management. :confused:

A hard disk can have either Amiga partitions or Windows partitions, not both. Certainly Windows cannot format a non-existent partition. If you want to format the disk for Windows you first need to create a partition. But then the CF is unusable for Amiga.

To create a Windows partition either right-click on the unallocated space in Windows disk management and select create new simple volume, or run diskpart again an use

select disk n
create partition primary
assign

Both will do the same.

I feel like disk clean etc has not done any good for my Sandisk whatsoever. :confused:

The clean command cleans the disk from all data. It's like virgin afterwards. Seems like you never saw a virgin disk before.

[Thomas]

Low level format is an invalid command for a CF card. That's ok. You cannot low level format hardrives anyway. Just keep away from this button. Save your partitions, reboot and use format disk from the Workbench menu. In the format program, keep away from the format button but click on quick.

[Thomas]

Done all that, i now have "Empty" on my Wb. So then should i change the name "Empty" to DH0: and then copy Wb files over via dopus. (I think my system hdf file is mounted as DHO: hmmmm)

You shouldn't use device names as volume names and you should avoid duplicate names. This just confuses AmigaDOS. Call it Workbench or System or CFDisk or something like that.

[Thomas]

You are probably trying to partition the system HDF rather than the CF card. The system HDF does not allow partitions because it is not in RDB mode (fortunately).

You cannot add a new harddrive after Workbench has already loaded up. You have to add the CF card together with the system HDF before you start the emulation.

Make sure that both the HDF and the CF are connected to UAE controller. In HDToolbox you should see both HDF and CF listed.

If the CF card was formatted for PC (i.e. with FAT or NTFS), you first need to clean it. Open a DOS window and enter DiskPart. Use list disk to list all available drives, then select disk n to select the CF card (replace n by the disk number of the CF card) and finally clean to remove all data from it. Only then WinUAE will accept it as empty.

[Thomas]

(I have set the drive to read/write and uae ...and set uaehf.device)

Is this meant as a solution or do you still have the same problem? 28 means write protected. I would have asked to check the read/write box to solve it.

Note that you cannot change the read/write state on the fly. You have to restart the emulation for the change to take effect. This is a harddrive after all. On a real computer you have to switch it off to make changes, too.

[Thomas]

Add more memory. Validating large partitions needs a lot of RAM. You don't need to format them again. When enough memory is available, the partitions validate automatically.

Or use PFS3, it does not need to validate and is ten times faster, too.

[Thomas]

I am not sure what you are asking for. After being formatted a partition is empty. If you want it to contain some files, you need to copy the files from somewhere. If you want to run ClassicWB on your Amiga, you need to copy the ClassicWB files from the system HDF to the real HDD or CF card.

[Thomas]

Are you sure that you don't confuse the boot partition on the CF card with the system partition on the HDF? You have two harddrives connected to the virtual Amiga: the HDF and the CF. The HDF contains one partition called System and the CF contains three partitions. So you should see four harddrive icons on the desktop. If you called the first partition on the CF card System, too, then it's easy to confuse it with the HDF partition. You should call it differently.

Note that bootable or not does not depend on the files contained on a partition. AmigaDOS will even boot from an empty partition. To make a partition bootable you need to activate the "Bootable" checkbox in HDToolbox.

It's easy to test if the CF card can boot up your Amiga: just remove the HDF from WinUAE and let the CF card alone. If WinUAE starts with this config, then your Amiga should do, too.