Prep 2.5" Amiga drive in WinUAE

[AndyFC]

I've boarded my attic and put sockets and proper lighting up there.

One of the projects I'd like to get going again is my towered A1200. Full spec is Blizz 1230 Mk4, 3.1 ROMS (mapped into the Blizzard RAM), 32 MB Fast RAM, CD Rom plugged in using CD1200 PCMCIA interface, 2.5" drive plugged straight into on-board IDE.

I'd like to prep the 2.5" drive using WinUAE. On the PC side I have a device which allows me to plug any 3.5 or 2.5" IDE device in as an external USB drive. I presume it's possible to connect the 2.5" drive up this way and prepare it in WinUAE in the same way that people are doing alot with CF cards.

However, what I'd like to do different is to prep the Workbench 3.9 install on the PC using an emulated drive and then plug in the 2.5" drive and copy eveything over when ready. As long as I mount the drive in WinUAE and format it using the HD Toolbox utility as a bootable Amiga drive, will just copying everything, including system files, work or will permissions or attributes get messed up?

Finally, would I be best using an install like ClassicWB, or go for a vanilla 3.9 (with BB2) and install updates such as listed here http://amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=62679&highlight=fblit (second half of Cammy's post).

[runequester]

On the latter part of your question, I must admit, I have enjoyed ClassicWB far more than I did 3.9. It runs nice and smooth, the included apps are better, and it covers a ton of the patches and tweaks you'd have to do by hand.

I also had bad luck with the 3.9 boing bags, resulting in a non-booting system a few times, but its possible I was just screwing things up.

[paul1981]

I set up my A600 gaming drive this way (motherboard IDE though not USB). I made an emulated A600 through WinUAE, set it up exactly how I wanted, then I attached a 2.5" HDD and installed it with HDToolbox/HDInstTools (under AmiSYS Os3.9). I then mounted my A600 emulation HDF and the 2.5" together for access through AmiSYS and I copied everything over this way for maximum speed.
Before you do the copy, make sure you have plenty of disk buffers, such as:

addbuffers dh0: 1000 (source)
addbuffers dh1: 1000 (destination)

Then from the shell, type:

copy dh0: dh1: all clone

This will copy all files from dh0: (source) to dh1: (destination) and will preserve the file dates as well as directory structure. Everything will be copied, including disk.info (icon). The added bonus of doing this copy is that it will be super fast on your destination drive as there will be no file fragmentation.

[zipper]

copy dh0: dh1: all clone quiet  - goes faster without the output.

[AndyFC]

Thanks all.
The clone option on the copy command sounds ideal.

Thanks for the advice on ClassicWB v 3.9 etc. I'll get around to it soon (the Hornby railway in the attic is taking up my time first).