Backup Amiga HD on a PC

[Peter_s]

Hi guys

Could some kind person tell me how, I would go about backing up my 2.2gig Amiga HD on my PC? I mostly just want to backup my workbench(600meg)onto cd but dont have a burner fitted into the amiga, so I thought I could transfer my workbench section to my PC and burn it to CD from there.   I have my amiga connected to my PC using ami-pc linkup(para cable)but cant seem to find away to transfer data to the PC from the amiga but have no problems transfering data to the amiga from the PC.  Also my PC f**ked up (nothing new there), I'm running windows XP now and have been told that ami-pc wont work with XP?

Thanks for any help in advance guys :-D

[ShadesOfGrey]

I was trying to do pretty much the same thing.  My plan was to use ABackup to create the backup archive, CrossDOS/fat95 to transfer the archives to an old 3GB IDE drive I had laying around, connect the drive to my PC and burn the archives to CD.

ABackup created the backup archives just fine.  And I was able to read/write to the FAT formatted drive with CrossDOS and later fat95 just fine.  I wanted to make sure ABackup would restore the boot block and RDB (I forget, are the same thing?).  So I burned the backup of my SYS: partition to a CD-RW, and was going to connec another spare IDE drive when disaster struck...  

My Amiga died.  To this day, I still don't know what's wrong with my 4000.  I also don't know if my scheme would have worked.  Maybe you can try it and find out.

[blobrana]

Hi,

WinUAE works wonderfully on XP...

WinUAE website...
(You should have it on your system, you know!)

All you need to do (once you`ve installed winUAE ) is to unplug the amiga HD, fit it into the PC, decant the information you want, (copy Amiga HD to PC HD)...reboot, and burn the PC...
 :-)

[Jettah]

Hi Peter,

Read your initial piece. But you state that you want to BU your Workbench of 600Mb??? What the hell do you store on your Workbench than? Sure 30Mb to 50 Mb should be more relevant figure? And than you can BU it to a ZIP of 100Mb! Or try a serial port connection with appropriate software on both sides to back it up to a PeeZee. By God, 600 Mb! You're shure your version ain't written by some dude at M$?

Come to think of it, you don't need to BU your entire partition. Instead, go only for a BU of your Startup-drawer, your Devs-Drawer and, very import, your Startup-sequence AND UserStartup both in S:. The rest is always on install-disks etc.

Cheers,

Tjitte

[NightShade737]

Libraries, Fonts, other programs install on WB partition...

[darksun9210]

once again, the usefullness of ethernet.

have got some old 2.5" drives work was gonna chuck out, so built workbench with all its jazz on one disk, copied it to a directory on the PC via mounting the PC's c: drive on the amiga via smb-handler.

swapped hard disks. installed basic workbench, miami, cnet.device, miami config, smb-hander and dos drivers to mount pc drives, copied all the stuff back again, reboot. ta-da! full fat workbench again. hopefully get it more streamlined. maybe even script it if i get bored. boot off one floppy and restore hard disk from PC, reboot. schweet.

[sir_inferno]

darksun9210 wrote:

 :-D

@blobrana

but surely to mount a hard drive in winUAE it has to be visible in windows? (i.e. fat/ntsc format?)

[NightShade737]

http://www.planearium2.de/bilder/wallpaper-char-cartman-800.jpg

And I think you mean NTFS not NTSC

[sir_inferno]

NightShade737 wrote:
http://www.planearium2.de/bilder/wallpaper-char-cartman-800.jpg

And I think you mean NTFS not NTSC

that's what you get for typing while half-asleep  :-D

[Morley]

Mounting an Amiga drive in WinUAE is no problem at all!
You should just resist to do anything in Windows/DOS on it, as this will kill the RDB and wipe out all data on it...
Just fire up Winuae and choose your Amiga-drive as bootdrive or something similar, and choose a directory on your Pecee to be used as another partition. Then you can copy everything from the ami-drive to your second partition(actually a directory on your pecee) using WinUAE, and then back up the directory using some recording software on windows. It worked flawlessly for me!

[cgutjahr]

As long as you are using Windows2000/XP, you can connect your Amiga HD to your PC and use WinUAE to access it.

You shouldn't do this if you are running an earlier version of Windows, as it will destroy your RDB.

You can also connect the PC's hd to your Amiga (that's what I did in the past, as the PC used for burning the CDs was running Win98). Use FAT95 from Aminet to access the PC hd.

[darksun9210]

heh, unless using a 2.5" drive and your 2.5-2.5" adapter doesn't carry power lines

i still like ethernet. mate of mine wanted some eye of the beholder2 save games. setup FTP server on gateway, and mounted amiga as a drive on the gateway. piece o cake, and no hardware giggery pokery


thanks for the cartman pic BTW, it did make oi larf  :lol:

[blobrana]

@Morley & cgutjahr
Hehe, tnx for the backup...
(i think we got them outnumbered on this one...)


@Peter_s
(foos yea doos!)
Just do it!

BTW. impressive website you got there, unfortunately there isn`t much about the Amiga on it...(Hehe,i know news is sparse, but there are still a few things happening on this platform...)

Fa` aboot are yea, in the `highlands`?
(I`m fae ABERdeen...)

[Peter_s]

Thanks guys for the advice, I'll get around to trying it tonight,  The main reason for wanting to BU the HD is my first amiga I bought A1200 desktop only came with games so I bought a second hand HD off ebay which didnt come with any disks.  Then I bought an 1200 Infin tower which didnt come with any software and then I bought another 1200 infin tower with a blizzard 603e board and it has'nt arrived yet so I'm just trying to be prepared just incase the worse happens.

@blobrana
Thanks for the comments on the website it is run by a group of ppl but it owned by Daven and jcab42.  But I have my own wee space on the site to design a sub-site so maybe When I get my amigas running right I'll do something on it.  I hail fae the Fair land of Inverness(culloden)

[Glaucus]

The WinUAE trick sounds interesting. However, another option would be to remove your CD burner and install it temporarily into the Amiga (or perhaps even buy a new one, burners are dirst cheap these days anyway). That way you can use ABackup to write directly to the CD (if it supports that feature). Alternatively, all you'd need is a NULL modem cable, and transfer the file(s) over using ZModem (Hmmmm...  haven't used that protocol in years...). Anyway, that should do the trick. Good luck!

  - Mike