Format Compact Flash with winuae

[Snoozy]

Hi,

I'm just looking to set up a 4gb trasncend cf hd. I'm using winuae 2.3.3 (run as admin) and i've added system hdf to load up wb. From there i add my cf card which shows up as 3.7G size. When i enter HD toolbox to partition the drive, i cannot get it recognised as a 4gb drive. Instead it shows up as 2gb, so i try and define new drive and read configuration,.. and it tells me "Drive does not support SCSI inquiry command"

How do i deal with this :confused:

[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.

[Snoozy]

Thanks for your help thomas, i will try again later on.

How large should i make the system partition for classic wb? 150mb?

[Snoozy]

Hi ppl,

Nealry sorted with this now. I have partitioned the drive (250mb for classic wb) and 2 other partitions and set the max transfer rate.

When i come to save the drives and exit it gives me an "error 28 on write"

What went wrong?

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

[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.

[Snoozy]

Ok, thanks i've got as far as workbench classic loading up. Then i have system as one partition and 2 others which are ndos, so if i quick format they end up being 100% full ?

How do i configure the partitions on wb?

[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.

[Snoozy]

Thanks for your help thomas, i think i've done this now. I have the system partition and 2 other partitions of 1.8gb.

Will this save in this state automatically now? Do i need to copy system hdf via dopus? Or have i finished?

[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.

[Snoozy]

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.

Thanks, so I'm still winuae wb and it all looks partitioned correctly. So now I just copy systemhdf into my system partition on the cf? (via dopus)

The reason I'm confused is that when I'm in winuae and double click my system (bootable) partition, it already looks like it has all the wb files in it! But is this because we are still in winuae? And if I stopped at this point + inserted into ide 1200 it wouldn't boot?

Once I've copied the system hdf onto cf, will it also save and remember my other 2 partitions?

[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.

[Snoozy]

Got it thanks thomas, am sure you're one of the most helpful experts here..

[nicholas.jj.taylor]

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.

Is it possible to do this under Windows XP? Using diskpart, only my internal harddrive is detected, not my flash card (4GB Transcend). I have UAE 2.3.3 with the ClassicWB (3.0) running on it. I'm trying to set up my flash card for use on an A1200, but when its in the actual A1200 machine it lists my card as CC0: and when I use HDToolBox, it says it can't partition due to being type 7. So back to the PC with a USB Compact Flash reader. I don't know how to wipe the disk using Windows XP. Can you help?

Also worth noting that the card works. Currently its formatted to a single FAT32 partition and mounts in UAE as a PC drive, but yeah. Need to wipe it to partition it to Amiga filesystem. Also, my A1200 is otherwise unexpanded. I noticed your post about not being able to see partitions with lower memory. Any tips to get around this with my 2mb?