Copying contents of Hard drive

[Phoenix]

Lookintg forward to firing up my a1200 when my seasonal holidays come around, with this in mind last time I booted the machine the internal hard drive was starting to get those tell tale noises of possible failure. I'm considering swapping it for a compact flash solution so just trying to find the best and safest way to copy all of the contents from the drive (classic os, games etc) ensuring that it remains bootable. I have never installed a drive on the amiga so any information will help.

The machine is accelerated, I cant remember the spec(not sure that is consideration)

[Phoenix]

Found this on another Forum, not sure it applies:- When I was at the stage you are now (only a few days ago in fact) this had me completely stumped as well but it turned out to be a case of over-thinking the problem. The reason such a procedure is not documented should become crystal clear once you have finished, read on.

Before starting, if you are not running WinNT/2000/XP/2003 I cannot personally recommend proceeding as I have not tried it on an older version of Windows, bad things could happen (or not, I simply don't know for sure).

1) Take the Hard Drive out of your Amiga and plug it in to your PC, load up WinUAE and create a configuration that is identical to your A1200 (or as close as you can get). In WinUAE's Hard Drive configuration section click the "Add Harddrive.." button and choose your real Amiga Hard Disk from the drop down list. Start WinUAE and it should boot off your real Amiga hard disk.

Sidenote to above: If the drive does not appear in the drop down list or you get a messagebox that says "No Amiga formatted or completely empty harddrives detected." then try running WinUAE from the command prompt and use the -disableharddrivesafetycheck commandline option, if this step is necessary make certain to choose the correct drive and do not allow WinUAE to write to disk.

2) Exit WinUAE and create new hardfile(s) for each partition on your real hard disk ensuring each one is at least as big as the partitions on the real hard drive. Add the real hard drive to WinUAEs drive list before adding the hardfile(s) to ensure the device names (DH0,DH1 etc) do not conflict. Start WinUAE and from within the emulator do a file copy from the real hard drive to the hardfiles using AmigaDOS or your favourite file manager.

3) Now restart WinUAE without adding the real drive to the drive list, it should now boot up and assuming all is well you can disconnect the old hard disk , hang it on a chain and wear it as a piece of jewellery

[som99]

There are a few easy ways to do this

Put the Amiga drive in a Windows computer, run WinUAE and configure to your liking then just go to the "CD & Hard drives" option, press "Add Hard Drive" (don't forget to run WinUAE as admin) and then just press "create hard disk image file" and you have a clone of your drive safe and sound

Later if you go for a new HDD or a CF solution you just have to mount both the HDF file and the new drive and then prepare the new drive it in hdtoolbox, don't forget to edit tooltypes to uaehf.device and don't forget to set maxtransfer to 0x1FE00 after that just copy everything over to the new drive and you are done.

Good luck

Edit: someone posted while I was typing

[danbeaver]

The quickest way is not the easiest way, that being said, your HDD is likely set to master, so the IDE-to-CF card adapter should be set to slave; using a two connector IDE cable (Amigakit or ebay) once the CF card is all formated and set to be boot able, set its boot priority to less than that of the HDD; then just use the copy command: >COPY HDD:  CF: ALL CLONE QUIET

If you have extra memory, then add a buffer to help with using the same bus for both drives: >COPY HDD:  CF: ALL CLONE QUIET BUF=1000.

Once the copy is finished remove the HDD and set the CF card to master.

[Phoenix]

Thank for your responses, I'm getting a bit paranoid about doing this as there seems to be so many opinions about 'how to'. One thing has come to mind with a CF solution, does the original Os write back to the drive for caching etc? Just thinking about the limited number of write a CF might have. Has anyone tried an ssd solutiion? Apologies if the questions appear very noob :-D

[som99]

Thank for your responses, I'm getting a bit paranoid about doing this as there seems to be so many opinions about 'how to'. One thing has come to mind with a CF solution, does the original Os write back to the drive for caching etc? Just thinking about the limited number of write a CF might have. Has anyone tried an ssd solutiion? Apologies if the questions appear very noob :-D

I have a MLC PATA/IDE SSD/DOM in my A1200 and I like it and I have a few MLC PATA/IDE 2,5" SSD's in other retro machines that works great, over the years using CF cards in a lot of things only 2 of maybe 50ish cards has failed for me and I don't even think it was because of wearing them out, modern CF cards using NAND are rated over a million writes per block so that's not bad at all So I don't think you have to worry about wearing them out.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I'm a bit of a purist and hate using WinUAE for anything.    How about on the Amiga use a PCMCIA-to-CF adapter in the card slot to prep & copy everything over to the card that way?  As a bonus you can use this in the future to make regular, easy backups (onto an additional card).  Or just do what @danbeaver said.  

[danbeaver]

The OS uses RAM for the cache/buffer.  442_Mike is correct, a PCMCIA is an excellent option as the transfer uses one bus for reads and another for writes.

[som99]

Forgot to add if you are afraid of the drive dying you should do a entire clone of the drive as soon as possible with something like CloneZilla since every second you use it is a risk for it failing.

I don't know the size of drive and how much you got on it but also worth keeping in mind if not cloning it first is that the WinUAE route is a lot faster then via PCMCIA, so personally I would do it that way instead of PCMCIA if copying from a dying drive, since time = risk.

[spaceman88]

Forgot to add if you are afraid of the drive dying you should do a entire clone of the drive as soon as possible with something like CloneZilla since every second you use it is a risk for it failing.

I don't know the size of drive and how much you got on it but also worth keeping in mind if not cloning it first is that the WinUAE route is a lot faster then via PCMCIA, so personally I would do it that way instead of PCMCIA if copying from a dying drive, since time = risk.

Does CloneZilla clone an Amiga drive? Does it need to be on the IDE bus or can you use an USB adapter?

[som99]

Does CloneZilla clone an Amiga drive? Does it need to be on the IDE bus or can you use an USB adapter?

If unknown file system is used CloneZilla does a Sector to sector copy so yepp works for Amiga But if you don't want to make such a extensive backup of a drive HDF should be enough

Ive used USB adapters with CloneZilla without problems

[danbeaver]

Emulation, the soul of mankind!

[scuzzb494]

Lookintg forward to firing up my a1200 when my seasonal holidays come around, with this in mind last time I booted the machine the internal hard drive was starting to get those tell tale noises of possible failure. I'm considering swapping it for a compact flash solution so just trying to find the best and safest way to copy all of the contents from the drive (classic os, games etc) ensuring that it remains bootable. I have never installed a drive on the amiga so any information will help.

The machine is accelerated, I cant remember the spec(not sure that is consideration)

I wanted to comment but I was not really sure what kind of set-up you had. Are you using a basic Amiga 1200 case or is the machine in a tower ? What accelerator do you have fitted ? If the machine is a standard A1200 has it been fitted with a 3.5" or does it have the 2.5" ? What OS are you running on the machine ? You should be able to determine just what you have from a visual inspection. Also what tell-tale noises are you hearing. Is the machine booting cleanly and running fine.

If you are just getting cehcksum errors and a partition is not validating then copy the contents from the bad partition to the good one. I often lost my Workbench partition  and had a copy on my Work partition. I just formatted the Workbench partition and copied the contents back. And have you checked how big the Workbench partition is. You only need the Workbench or System partition to run the computer so don't worry about your games and stuff. Just that the OS may just drag onto a series of disks. Depends what OS you are running. I also assume you have your original disks.

Not sure about this swapping hard drives and emulators as I have never used one. Best I have done is use a Parnet with the PC. I also fit SCSI kit to my Amigas so I can run a ZIP drive and CD. The ZIP drive can carry the entire contents of the Amigas hard drive. I put that onto CD from a ZIP drive in the PC and CD Burner. Also I have the Amiga Networked which also helps. Never used a compact flash so can't help there.

As soon as you can, if you are keen, you need to work out the way to back up your system. As I say I use a series of SCSI drives, ZIP and CD and have a few copies of everything on CD and spare hard drives and ZIPs. Plus I have other Amigas with the drives contents on. I would be lost without the Workbench on my beloved Amiga 1200... been with me since 1993 and still growing.

Have fun and remember when a door is locked in front of you, don't waste time trying to open it. There is probably another way around. The journey may be longer but the experience is always more rewarding.

[danbeaver]

Unless your failing hard drive can last a year doing so, Parnet is not the way to copy a hard disk, a few files, maybe.  If you have been emulating before and understand all the ins-&-outs of handling a HDD, then this is a fast option. If you need to "come up to speed" learning emulation, then it will take quite a while.  With a double connector IDE cable, after you make your copy, you can connect an IDE CDROM and install some software (OS3.9, games, internet browsers, and just copy thing from a PC by just burning a CD).

[Phoenix]

Found this guide interesting:- http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?19899-CF-SD-and-large-drives-FAQ