HDF file wont boot in Winuae

[mcnab69]

I would like to take a backup of the HD in my Amiga 810mb 2.5 HD IDE drive (Seagate ST9810AG) store the backup for safe keeping and also test the backup through WINUAE on my PC, booting from DH0 and accessing the other partitions DH1 and DH2.

I realise can do this via a PCMCIA > CF adapter, but currently only have a 128mb card.

Using a MAC Pro and a 2.5 ide > USB 2.0 adapter, I used the terminal command dd to output the contents of /dev/disk1 to an HDF file. This all worked fine and took about 6 minutes to create.

I have copied the .HDF file to my WINAUE install (on a PC) added the file via Add Hardfile, but I cannot get WINUAE to boot from this hardfile. It just displays the insert disk animation.

Do I need to enter figures in the boot priority, surfaces, reserved, sectors, block size fields?

Thanks in advance!

[mcnab69]

thanks, I made a copy with DD, so i didnt make any changes to it. How do you make it bootable?

The hard drive is IDE but I don't have a IDE 44 > 40 cable available for my PC, hence using the USB adapter.

[mcnab69]

Thanks Thomas

Its the normal internal IDE Controller.

The MAC uses Unix so the DD command is industry standard to make a low level copy of data and /dev/disk1 means the whole drive.

The Enable RDB mode is greyed out and disabled after I add the .hdf.

I think the solution maybe TSGUI as I left the boxes alone, so I'll give that a go later on the Amiga.

I'll let you know how I get on.

Cheers

Was it connected to an RDB-compatible controller, e.g. the internal IDE controller of an A1200 or A600? If not, which controller is it?

I am not familiar with Mac Pro and its syntax. Does /dev/disk1 specify the whole harddrive or only one partition?

What does WinUAE say in the text box below "HD controller" when you add the HDF (see hardcopy as an example, there it says "500MB RDSK...")? Does it automatically enable RDB mode (i.e. disable the button)?

If the hdf contains only one partition, then you need to adjust the values for surfaces and sectors according to how the partition was mounted on the Amiga. TSGUI can tell you the values if you run it on the Amiga. There is no way to tell later.

[mcnab69]

TSGUI won't help with RDB mode HDFs.

What did you select as controller?

Which config do you use?

Ive just left the controller as UAE. Config is the 1200 one.

[mcnab69]

Thanks again for all your help Thomas

I loaded the early startup menu and it lists amongst other things DH0: 0 uaehf.device-0 DOS0 [444F5300] 791824k

Im wondering if its to do with the following settings as if I set them to  Boot Pri 0, Surfaces 1, Reserved 2, Sectors 32 and Block size 512
The following then appears in the box below. Not sure if this is accurate but it seems close.
49489 cyls, 1583648 blocks, 773.3MB/773.3MB RDSK...@ [5244534B00000040]

When booting this time, it says DH0 not formatted instead of ignoring the drive and going to the WB floppy screen. Is that a clue to the problem?

If thats the case, how do i find the correct settings for my drive? I obtained these from a YouTube video I watched called LemonAmiga.

I used a USB 2.0 drive, formatted as ExFat and copied that from my MAC > Drive > Windows PC.

What if you hold down both mouse buttons before the emulated Amiga starts (set CPU speed to approximate A500 in order to have enough time). Do you see the partitions in the early startup menu?

Add tsgui.lha as a second harddrive by add directory or archive -> select archive. When you boot now, you'll get a DOS window. Enter

stack 8000
cd tsgui
tsgui

Does the drive list show your partitions?

Select "select raw device" from the menu. Does the unit chooser show your HDF?

How did you transfer the HDF from your Mac to the Windows PC? Could it be that it was treated as text and that newline characters were converted to cr lf? The HDF must be transferred as binary.

[mcnab69]

Quick update, bearing in mind my Amiga 800mb HD is split into 3 partitions. DH0 (201), DH1(300) and DH2 (270)

On the Amiga, I ran TSGUI went to Partition Info and for each it said Surfaces 16, Sectors 63, Reserved 2 and block 512.

I next entered these in WINUAE and now get a Software Error! progress possibly?!

Error 8000 0008  task 00211770

Cheers

[mcnab69]

thanks for explaining about RDB, wasnt sure what that meant.

i couldnt get tsgui to work when adding as a second image, it loaded a shell window and i entered the commands as you said, but when typing tsgui nothing happened.

So i booted off a wb3.1.adf image and the tsgui.lha was listed on the workbench window, so I double clicked on that and it allowed me to run it.
tsgui only lists DF0 and DH0 (tsgui.lha) so guess its not reading the .hdf at all?

The HDF is in RDB mode (RSDK = Rigid Disk Block = RDB). You cannot use it in non-RDB mode. A non-RDB HDF contains only one partition and no RDSK block. Your HDF contains three partitions. You have to set surfaces, sectors and reserved to 0 (that's what the "Enable RDB Mode" button does).

Please do what I said above, i.e. run TSGUI in WinUAE and tell me the results of the tests.

[mcnab69]

And the rest? Does it list it as a raw device?

In WinUAE's harddrives list, is there anything in the column left of "Device"? (Like the E in front of Share in my hardcopy)

I couldnt find "select raw device" option in TSGUI?

Here's a snip of the WINUAE and TSGUI windows, there is no E, just a *

[mcnab69]

I got TSGUI from Aminet (which is the first hit on Google) and that just says About, Partition Info and Quit its v2.2 (see picture)
I didnt realise your link was to a newer version (2.5 b15) with more menu items, sorry!

With 2.5 I can select Raw Device, then Devices, then can select uaehf.device
this allows me to select UAE myamiga.hdf 0.3, which shows a 772MB, Full HDD image (see picture)

Hope this helps, what do you suggest next?

[mcnab69]

Thanks for coming back Thomas, I've thought about this and to be honest this is taking far too much of your time, just to resolve for a simple backup question in the beginning. Clearly there is something Ive done wrong somewhere along the line, so its time to call it a day.

Because of this Ive now bought a 4GB CF card and PCMCIA reader, so can effectively backup the Amiga that way, plus now using TSGUI - great program by the way rather than using the original DD on the Mac method.

Very many thanks for all your help and patience, its been most appreciated

All the best to you sir!

Sorry for the delay. I didn't see that you added something to the thread because edited posts don't appear in the unread posts list.

Please after selecting the raw device choose "save RDB to file" from the menu and attach the resulting file here.

If it does not let you save the RDB please cut off the first 2 MB of the HDF, compress it with ZIP or RAR and attach it here. If you don't know how to cut off a part of a file, let TSGUI save the virtual HDD into a new HDF and cancel the process after a few seconds.

[mcnab69]

I tried putting the Amiga hard drive on to my IDE adapter and on Windows, interestingly, WinUAE can see the drive, but it still wont boot from it. Maybe there is an inherent fault with the hard drive, so even more reason to back it all up!

I agree this would be a lot faster, so I'll figure something out so that I can take a backup.

You already removed the HDD from your Amiga and connected it to an USB reader once. I would suggest to do this again but this time use the Windows PC instead of the MAC. WinUAE should be able to access the HDD directly and it can also do a full volume image copy (similar to what dd does).

[mcnab69]

Also before I sign off I did try selecting raw device and choosing "save RDB to file" from the menu but TSGUI said I had to select a partition first.

[mcnab69]

Yes it boots fine on the Amiga, which is strange isnt it!

Then there is something wrong with the RDB. Does it still boot on the real Amiga?

If an Amiga HDD is connected to a Win98 machine, a few bytes are overwritten although the Amiga parttions cannot be accessed. This certainly renders the HDD unusable for the Amiga. This special case will be repaired automatically by WinUAE. Perhaps the MAC does something similar which is not known to WinUAE yet.

Please do what I said above as second option, i.e. let TSGUI read the first few MB of the HDD and attach the result here (compressed).

[mcnab69]

Interesting idea, yes I can

Saved the RDB to a zip, I loaded Winuae mounted the saved zip as an archive along with TSGUI. Selected the Raw Device in TSGUI, restored the saved RDB over the top of the HDF file after reading the warning (i was working on a backup .HDF anyway) and tried to boot but it said not a DOS disk in DH0 this time. Not sure if thats what you meant to try?

Ive attached the saved RDB from the Amiga for you.

Can you "save RDB to file" on the real Amiga?

If yes, what happens if you use this saved RDB to "restore RDB from file" in WinUAE?

[mcnab69]

Thanks Thomas, that does seem to be the case, but still doesnt explain why Winuae wont boot from the the Amiga hard drive when connected to the PC via USB? do you think it needs a full IDE connection instead? (somewhere I think I have a 40>44 pin IDE cable lying around)

At the end of the day I just want to backup the Amiga, quickly, reliably and easily, but if it means just keeping a copy of the files via Compact Flash, that would have to suffice. I don't have a parallel port on my PC anymore to use my old Paradise cable, so the options I have are limited.

The RDB is of not much use because it's obviously correct.

The experiment shows that the HDF is not accurate. Something went wrong either with dd or when you transferred the HDF from the Mac to the PC.

I would suggest that you create a new HDF on the PC or on the Amiga. The one you have is unusable and I doubt that it can be repaired easily.