Switching from a 170Mb HDD to a 2Gb CF card

[paul2004v]

So my first upgrade since I landed back in the world of Amiga is to switch out my A1200's 2.5" 170Mb HDD and replace it with a 2Gb CF card. This is straightforward enough, I have all the software required on disk etc. but before I go ahead, I'd like to take an image of my HDD and I'd like to know what my options are short of taking the drive out, hooking it up via a USB adapter and using Ubuntu to do a DD of the drive.

Are there any easier Amiga way to do this or is what I'm outlining the only way?

I have a PCMCIA Ethernet card and I use FTPMount to mount a NAS device so I could image the disk directly to the NAS if there was some Amiga software to do this but I wouldn't know where to look ATM.

Cheers

Paul

[TjLaZer]

I would just get a PCMCIA to CF adaptor and mount and copy the whole HD to it, then install the new CF and copy over the data.

There might be a way to just install the replacement CF via PCMCIA but i think it's more of a pain.  This way you have a backup solution.

[Thomas]

before I go ahead, I'd like to take an image of my HDD and I'd like to know what my options are short of taking the drive out, hooking it up via a USB adapter and using Ubuntu to do a DD of the drive.

Are there any easier Amiga way to do this or is what I'm outlining the only way?

I have a PCMCIA Ethernet card and I use FTPMount to mount a NAS device so I could image the disk directly to the NAS if there was some Amiga software to do this but I wouldn't know where to look ATM.

TSGUI can take an image copy like DD does.

Stable: http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/tsgui
Latest: http://thomas-rapp.homepage.t-online.de/downloads/tsgui.lha

The latter has an option to resume a copy process if the Amiga crashes in between.

However, IMHO an image copy is not a good backup because you are bound to the exact size of the backed up drive. You cannot restore it to a smaller drive and if you restore it to a larger drive, the additional space is lost.

You should rather make a file backup. It takes less space, creation is probably faster and you are flexible in partition size.

For each partition enter these two commands:

Code: [Select]


cd drivename:
lha -erax a nasdrive:backup_drivename_22-jun-2011


You might also want to add a 'z' to the options (i.e. -eraxz) which means that the archive will not be compressed. Compression needs a lot of time.

To restore the backup, prepare and partition a new hdd and then for each partition enter these commands:

Code: [Select]


cd drivename:
lha -xa x nasdrive:backup_drivename_22-jun-2011


(for that you need lha, tcp/ip and ftpmount on your boot disk of course).

[paul2004v]

Thanks for both suggestions

I think you're probably right Thomas regarding using lha to back up the current hard drive and I'll probably do that for transfer purposes but I'm not planning on throwing the 170Mb HDD away, simply retiring it and placing it into storage. As such I'd like to take an image of it so if it does fail at some point I still have a copy of the drive as it was when extracted.

All for posterity!

Thanks again.

Paul

[paul2004v]

Just as an update, I attempted the LhA (and LZX) method of archiving the drive and I encountered a weird problem that I couldn't get around.

Essentially, the process went like this.

1. Create a boot disk with AmiTCP, FTPMount and LhA on.
2. Boot from the floppy and archive DH0: to a file on DH1:
3. Use FTPMount to move the archive to the NAS.
4. Switch out the IDE Drive for the CF card
5. Boot with the floppy and bring down the Archive from the NAS.
6. Decompress the archive.

Everything worked just fine until the decompression stage. At which point, no matter what I tried, LhA and LZX both complained that the Archive was corrupt.

To double check that the FTP process wasn't mauling the archive file, I put the IDE drive back in and downloaded the archive from the NAS to the drive and used the "t" parameter to test the archive. All files were present and "Tested OK". File count 927.

When I tested the archive saved to the CF Card, corruption was reported and only 166 files were in the archive. Very odd indeed.

So after a couple of days of testing, I've plumped for an easy way out. I've bought a 3-way IDE cable so I can plug in the drive and CF Card at the same time, transfer the files that way and then remove the drive. Hopefully that'll work...

I'm really puzzled as to why the LhA and LZX archivers both exhibit the same behaviour when I swap the IDE drive out though. Very odd.

[Thomas]

CF cards are very sensitive to correct MaxTransfer settings. Make sure that each partition on the CF card has MaxTransfer set to 0x1fe00. Otherwise you'll see more corruption on every file which is bigger than 127.5 KB.

MaxTransfer is changed in HDToolbox / Partition drive / Advanced options / Change. Be sure to press Enter or Tab key after changing an input field, otherwise the change will not be used.

[paul2004v]

CF cards are very sensitive to correct MaxTransfer settings. Make sure that each partition on the CF card has MaxTransfer set to 0x1fe00. Otherwise you'll see more corruption on every file which is bigger than 127.5 KB.

Ahhh.... That fixed it! Thanks. Funnily enough, I have a hand written note in my original manuals setting the MaxTransfer rate for the IDE HDD and I never gave it a thought when installing the CF card. Anyway, the original LZX archive decompressed correctly and I now have a bootable CF card with my original WB3.0 settings on. Now onto the next partition

Thanks

Paul