Format Harddrive to Amiga F.S. in Windows?

[decore]

Is there anyway i can format any harddrive in my box to amiga file format? ffs/pfs/sfs/whatever. ?

Is there a program which can do such a task.
Please tell me if you know...

The goal is to use it in Winuae and be able to put it back in my amiga's of course.
Please help.

[mikeymike]

If you want to have more luck looking for what you want, I'd suggest looking for a filesystem driver for Windows rather than a format utility.  A format utility is quite simple to design in comparison to getting the OS to use the partition safely

I strongly doubt you'll find it for Windows.  Some UNIX variants have at least Amiga FFS support (warning: the name Fast File System isn't just Amiga-related).

I'd suggest getting WinUAE to use a path as a volume on AmigaOS under emulation, then when you want to 'put it back' in your Amiga, network transfer via FTP or something.

- edit - Oh, I should have said - if Windows can't read the filesystem, it won't mount it as a drive.  So cast aside thoughts of partitions only being readable in WinUAE :-)

Does the Linux FFS driver support write operations?

[AmigaHeretic]

The goal is to use it in Winuae and be able to put it back in my amiga's of course.

If you do have an Amiga, my thought would be to format it on the real thing using, FFS, PFS, or SFS..which ever you prefer. (I uses SFS and thinks it's awsome)

After it's formated(and put back into the WinUAE machine) you should be able to use it in WinUAE.  Windows won't recognize the drive at all (won't assign it a letter and it won't show up when you click on MyComputer).  But WinUAE will be able to see it when you set WinUAE up to use a real Amiga formatted HD.  

I just suggest this way as I haven't tried and I 'm not sure if you can just take a non Amiga formatted HD and format in WinUAE.

Good luck.

AmigaGuy

[mikeymike]

Does the Linux FFS driver support write operations?

I don't know.

[mikeymike]

@ amigaguy

After it's formated(and put back into the WinUAE machine) you should be able to use it in WinUAE. Windows won't recognize the drive at all (won't assign it a letter and it won't show up when you click on MyComputer). But WinUAE will be able to see it when you set WinUAE up to use a real Amiga formatted HD.

Do you believe that after reading something reliable that says it can do that?  Otherwise I seriously doubt it will work, because it would require WinUAE to reinvent the wheel in disk access for itself, and probably would require admin privs to run on NT/2k/XP.

Thinking about the other recent WinUAE thread and NT4, and someone saying that recent versions of WinUAE won't work on NT4 (which I doubt also, unless they know it for a "tried it, been there, watched it fail myself" fact), I thought for a second that it could be a recent DirectX function to allow direct disk access, but I seriously doubt that also, as it would pave the way for viruses/trojans to do very nasty things to a disk very easily.  And what would be the point in DX having such a function, I can't think.

[AmigaHeretic]

Do you believe that after reading something reliable that says it can do that? Otherwise I seriously doubt it will work, because it would require WinUAE to reinvent the wheel in disk access for itself, and probably would require admin privs to run on NT/2k/XP.

This is how my XP system works.  I have a 40 gig HD for XP and a 6 gig drive that is Amiga formatted.  The 6 gig drive doesn't show up anywhere in XP.  XP doesn't recognize it all.  WinUAE is the only thing that recognizes it.  When you go into the WinUAE setup for using an Amiga drive, there is a drop down box that you click on and it shows only the 6 gig drive and nothing else.  It boots right off the drive.  I have WinUAE setup so it shows the XP hard drive too.  I can then copy what I want from the XP drive to the Amiga drive ( I use Dopus 4 which I love)  and then I can hook the drive back up to my A1200 and use it on there too.

As far as the new versions of WinUAE not working on NT4, my experience with that is they don't.  I had NT4 at work and the newest version that would work was 0.8.8.  No jit so it was just too slow.  The company updated to Windows 2000 in December and I have tried installing the lasted WinUAE and it won't work on that either.  I get an error message that it's trying to look for some DirectX 8 DLL file.  The version of Win2000 at work only has DirectX 7 on it and I haven't tried to updated DirectX at work..yet

AmigaGuy

[Munchkin]

mdma wrote:
Does the Linux FFS driver support write operations?

Yes it does, and it works well too as far as I can say. I have never experienced any problems.

[mikeymike]

@ Amigaguy

Hmm, curiouser and curiouser.  I wonder why the JIT won't work on NT4.

Btw, I've never had any problems updating DX on 2k, if you're worried.  :-)

[Terminills]

Winuae will only recognise a drive with no MBR.  If the drive was previously formatted for dos or windows it may be required to wipe the drive a couple times as fdisk won't remove the MBR.  Then once the drive is totally clean winuae should see it.  I'm running a 40 gig installed partitioned and formatted through Winuae.   :-D

[decore]

I must thank you all for the replies in such short amount of time. It's most impressive.

Speaking of file systems. I am aware of FFS limits,
or at least the limits which were present last time i checked, What version of SFS is recognized to be most stable and working? And is it still freeware?

Note: Stability is KING in my eyes.

I remember having about 3000 files in sys:c\
with ffs it took about a minute to list it all, with AFS
it took about 2 sec. Is SFS that good?

Sorry for being so... out of the loop =)

[AmigaHeretic]

@mikeymike

Good to hear DirectX should update O.k.  The other thing I'm worried about with updating DX on Win2k is getting in trouble at work  The company doesn't really like us messing with 'their' computers too much.  But it would be nice to have an Amiga setup at work  

@decore

I've been using SFS version 1.195 for a while now with no problems.  The newest version I believe is 1.205.   The main advantages for me are longer file names (over a 100 characters to FFS's less than 40), large hard drive support (greater than 4 gig), and then the 'no more invalidated disks'.  I've had no validation problems or lost data after the computer has crashed during disk access since I've started using SFS.    I have never had any problems using SFS.  I'd say SFS works a charm

AmigaGuy

[decore]

well in sfs_beta.lha i found smart file system :
Short:    Smart Filesystem V1.58 BETA
Author:   hjohn@xs4all.nl
Uploader: hjohn@xs4all.nl
Type:     disk/misc
Version:  1.58


the url is http://www.xs4all.nl/~hjohn/SFS/
u get the file from there.

However. it is beta.

On a earlier search today i actually saw 1.93 or something.

Thus it can not be right i know, but at least, there does exist even newer version as you suggest.

Have tried to wipe a disk but winuae still does not see it.

What would happen if i now took and recreated mbr?
I am thinking about safety concers etc.

[AmigaHeretic]

Here's a link for the latest version 1.205 ( 205 is newer than 93 as in the version 1.93) of SFS.   I think the author considers all the version so far as 'Beta'.  (i.e. Their are no non-beta versions--but I could be wrong about that)  

http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/~aminet/disk/misc/SFS.lha

AmigaGuy

[Terminills]

@decore


try this program to get rid of the MBR

Paragon Demo

Make sure you use the wipe disk and not just wipe partition option.  It took 30 min on my 40 gig but it completely cleaned my drive so Winuae could see it.