Hard disks formatted with WinUAE... Useable by a real Amiga?

[StevenJGore]

Hi,

If I were to do the following:
- Connect a 2.5" hard drive to my PC, so that it shows as a drive letter in Windows,
- Format the drive from within WinUAE using the usual Workbench "Format" command,
- Install Workbench onto the newly-formatted drive, within WinUAE

...could I then just put the hard disk into a real Amiga, and it would boot Workbench?

Or does WinUAE just "pretend" to format it for the Amiga, and it's actually just FAT32 or NTFS?

Thanks!
Steve.

[Thomas]

You cannot format a drive which has a drive letter in WinUAE. You must use an unformatted, unpartitioned drive. Then you can use the "Add Harddrive" option in WinUAE, use HDToolbox or a similar program to partition it and format it using WinUAE. This drive then should be usable in your Amiga. Windows must not see the drive. Once Windows sees it, it is unusable in an Amiga. And there is a security protection in WinUAE which prevents Windows drives to be seen in WinUAE, so the drive has to be really empty (or Amiga formatted). However you can circumvent the protection by a command line switch, but this is for advanced users only.

Bye,
Thomas

[StevenJGore]

Thanks for the quick reply!

You cannot format a drive which has a drive letter in WinUAE.

But presumably the drive is still recognised by the PC's BIOS, and is shown on the BIOS start-up screen along with all other hard disks and DVD drives etc? How come Windows doesn't detect the drive?

You must use an unformatted, unpartitioned drive.

So if I have a 2.5" hard drive that has previously been formatted on a PC, I can't format it with WinUAE at all? Any way round this?

Thanks!
Steve.

[Acill]

So if I have a 2.5" hard drive that has previously been formatted on a PC, I can't format it with WinUAE at all? Any way round this?

Thanks!
Steve.

Yes you can go into fdisk on a PC and remove the partition data. This would make the drive seem empty again. At least it should.

[Thomas]

StevenJGore wrote:
But presumably the drive is still recognised by the PC's BIOS, and is shown on the BIOS start-up screen along with all other hard disks and DVD drives etc? How come Windows doesn't detect the drive?

Windows does not care about unpartitioned drives. In order to get a drive letter you have to run FDisk or a similar program.

So if I have a 2.5" hard drive that has previously been formatted on a PC, I can't format it with WinUAE at all? Any way round this?

You can run winuae.exe with the -disableharddrivesafetycheck option. But be warned: it will offer your Windows drive for addition in WinUAE either. If you access it with HDToolbox your Windows installation and all data will be lost.

Bye,
Thomas

[StevenJGore]

Mainly thanks to Thomas and Acill, I have now successfully created an Amiga hard disk (ie. partitioned, formatted, and installed Workbench) on my PC using WinUAE, which then worked in a real Amiga.

For future reference (hopefully to help other people) here is how I did it:

1. I attached a 2.5" hard disk to my PC using a 2.5" to 3.5" converter bought off eBay.
2. I booted Windows and then loaded WinUAE from the command-line prompt using "winuae -disableharddrivesafetycheck".
3. I loaded my "A4000" AmigaOS3.9 configuration and then clicked "Add harddrive..." on the "Hard Drives" tab.
4. After a couple of warnings, I was able to choose from two harddrives... either "ToshibaMK1403MAV" or "Maxtor6Y120M0".
5. I chose the Toshiba drive, since the Maxtor drive is my Serial ATA PC hard disk!
6. I booted the AmigaOS3.9 config and loaded HDToolbox. (NB. For some unknown reason, the version of HDToolbox that came with Workbench 3.1 wouldn't recognise the Toshiba drive, otherwise I would just have booted from the "Install" disk of Workbench 3.1)
7. I installed and partitioned the drive with HDToolbox (choose "uaehf.device" and then select the name of the harddrive as it appeared in the WinUAE GUI). I'm assuming that people reading this at least know how to use HDToolbox for partitioning once they have selected a harddrive.
8. I formatted the partitions, and then booted WinUAE with the Workbench 3.1 "Install" disk to install Workbench 3.1 onto the hard disk in the usual way.
9. I tested the harddrive and its new install of Workbench 3.1 with WinUAE.
10. I put the harddrive in my SX32 Pro and booted it successfully, without any problems whatsoever!

I have to say, it was rather weird having an Amiga-formatted harddrive in my PC which Windows Explorer couldn't access, but WinUAE could access as normal.

Hope this guide helps somebody in future!

Steve.

[sir_inferno]

StevenJGore wrote:
(...)
3. I loaded my "A4000" AmigaOS3.9 configuration and then clicked "Add harddrive..." on the "Hard Drives" tab.
4. After a couple of warnings, I was able to choose from two harddrives... either "ToshibaMK1403MAV" or "Maxtor6Y120M0".
5. I chose the Toshiba drive, since the Maxtor drive is my Serial ATA PC hard disk!
6. I booted the AmigaOS3.9 config and loaded HDToolbox. (NB. For some unknown reason, the version of HDToolbox that came with Workbench 3.1 wouldn't recognise the Toshiba drive, otherwise I would just have booted from the "Install" disk of Workbench 3.1)

Surely the hard drive has to visible to windows to mount it as an amiga drive? am i understanding it? (probably not :-))

[StevenJGore]

Surely the hard drive has to visible to windows to mount it as an amiga drive? am i understanding it?

The hard drive is visible on the BIOS boot screen (in the list with the other hard drives and DVD drives etc.), and will also show up in Windows Device Manager as a hard drive (it will be detected and automatically installed when Windows loads).

If the hard drive is unpartitioned, then Windows Explorer will not be able to "see" it, because it can't assign a drive letter to anything. WinUAE can still see it though.

My 2.5" drive had been used previously in a PC, so it showed as drive letters in Windows Explorer. That is why I had to start WinUAE with safety tests disabled, so that I could select it from the list in WinUAE. As soon as I had partitioned the drive with HDToolbox in AmigaOS3.9, and then formatted, Windows Explorer could no longer "see" the drive (the drive letters just disappeared).

...and don't call me Shirley! :-)

[leirbag28]

Well, I just recently started using WinUAE and I was able to fully copy my SX32 Pro Hard drive onto a Windows folder and Use a Virtual Amiga SX32 hard drive config!  its also cool to make multiple copies of your hard drive  the way you like everything set up and then if like me, you have multiple Amigas.the set up looks the same no matter which Amiga your using..........plus dont have to worry about losing files cuz they are backed up in WinUAE..............................

But I have been recently trying to burn these onto a CD using WinUAE and MakeCD or MasterISO.they both see the CDR drive but wont burn....I have a hard time comprehending MakeCD...also I did not make an Image..was just trying to dump files onto the CD.........I tried burning a CD of one of my partitions using Windows..........but when I use the CD in my CD32/SX32 pro.....the files are all messed up and names are cut off.........like .info is now .NFO...........gets me really upset.

[Thomas]

But I have been recently trying to burn these onto a CD using WinUAE and MakeCD or MasterISO.they both see the CDR drive but wont burn....I have a hard time comprehending MakeCD...also I did not make an Image..was just trying to dump files onto the CD.........I tried burning a CD of one of my partitions using Windows..........but when I use the CD in my CD32/SX32 pro.....the files are all messed up and names are cut off.........like .info is now .NFO...........gets me really upset.

Well, writing CD-R(W)s with MakeCD works flawlessly for me on WinXP. However you can always use MakeCD to create an image file. Call it something.iso, then load something.iso into Nero or a similar burning program and write it to CD.

If you want to create the image with Nero, choose ISO 9660 Level 2. Level 1 will cut off file names. You can also use Joliet if your Amiga has CacheCDFS or AsimCDFS installed.

Bye,
Thomas