Help creating large hardfile for WinUAE
 

OK I am tearing my hair out here.
I'm running WinUAE succesfully, with a ClassicWBFull from the default 500mb "system.hdf"
What I want to do is, in anticipation of getting an 8gb CF card, create an 8gb hardfile, install ClassicWBFull on it, and copy across all the WHDLoad files so I can "practise" how my Amiga 1200 will be set up with the 8gb card.

I have found loads..LOADS..of tutorials telling me how to install on to an 8gb CF card, partitioning it, etc etc which is great... for when it arrives...

But I am having no luck creating the 8gb hardfile. I can create a small one (500mb)which is seen fine by the Amiga under WinUAE... however any bigger than that and nothing appears...I've tried 4gb,8gb, all sorts....WinUAE seems to create the hardfile ok... but there is no way Workbench picks it up..

I've copied a custom 1200scsi.device to dev\scsi.device like it says in one tutorial... but still nothing

Can someone tell me simply how to create an 8gb hardfile, have it recognised by my emulated Amiga1200 inside WinUAE, ready for cloning it on to my CF card when it arrives? :banghead

hi,

here are some good video tutorials:
FastFileSystem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh8hZSZPCMA

ProfessionalFileSystem3- PFS3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOXBNEBY34o

in the description of the guides is a link to a floppy image with the tools they use in the video.

there are some restriction for the first partition, it needs to be
max 2GB - I'm not really sure about this, maybe 1GB only ?

i hope this will help.

OK thanks for those videos, I've watched them both and I am attempting to follow through the second video.

I have created a hardfile 8192mb in size, and assigned it the PFS3-020ds filesystem in WinUAE.

However I am stuck when I reset the emulated amiga and go to classicworkbench, neither hdtools or hdinst will show any drive??

In the video, he resets, goes to hdtools, and the drive is detected.

When I do that, I get no drive detected.

Still tearing my hair out here :(

OK so I have ignored the fact that I want an 8gb hardfile, and gone back and just created a 4mb hardfile like he does.... guess what, still no drives found!

Last resort - used the bootdisk that he was using... HDToolBox detected the drives first time. For F*** Sake!!!!!!

Why doesn't ClassicWBFull (latest vers 28) come with HDToolBox that recognises the WinUAE drives? How bizarre.

OK so i've now got an 8gb hardfile, but Workbench will only allow formatting and partitioning of 2 x 4gb... I thought PFS would allow one big 8gb partition... maybe I am misunderstanding.

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=61666 ("Other problems > 4GiB")

You need to ensure the SCSI_DEVICE_NAME tooltype in the HDToolBox icon has the correct device name for the config/setup you're using.

Depending on how you set up your emulation config, you might need SCSI_DEVICE_NAME=uaehf.device there. Whereas if you have the HDF connected to the (emulated) A1200's IDE port, scsi.device would work (and HDToolBox uses that name by default).

Thanks for the help everyone..I ended up following this guide... but confusing myself because the drive was still only showing 4gb rather than the full 8gb. I managed to put classicWB on the card and booted it up and it saw the full 8gb... This must've been one of the most difficult/frustrating tasks ever!
Not helped by there seemingly multiple ways of achieving the end result..conflicting guyides..old/outdated advice etc etc
Anyway its done now and I have a 8gb CF card with whdload and all the useful tools that I found during this exercise...
The guide I used, in case anyone else gets as frustrated as I did...

https://16bitdust.wordpress.com/2015...nuae-and-pfs3/

They are not necessarily conflicting because different HD controllers and filesystems do have different limits and it is very easy to lose data if controller/filesystem combination does not support >4G.