Proper HD and WinUAE
 

Basically I have some small <4GB hard-drives around here which I want to use wth UAE to prepare being put back into a proper Amiga (I need some wires to connect it to a proper Amiga you see hence I can't format the HDs in an Amiga).

When I remove all the partitions it says it can't find an empty drive. When I format it, the same again.

I wondered if there was a way I could use this HD with UAE?

Cheers,


M.

Yeah you can use the drive with WinUAE.

I would GREATLY recommend installing SFS on it as a replacement filesystem over FFS as it's MUCH better.

I wrote a guide a little while back which explains how to setup the drive in WinUAE, format it and start using it with ease :)

http://wiki.abime.net/amiga:killergo...winuae_realhdd

Thanks KG!

When I get to the step where I click on 'Add Hard Drive' I get the message "No hard disks detected that were either empty or RDB-partitioned" and I can't add anything.

Tried it formatted and none formatted - any ideas?

Using latest WinUAE and Vista!




M.

Did you use the "magic" command line parameter? (check readme.txt for more information) WinUAE only considers drive "empty" if first few blocks are zeroed (no PC partition table)

You also need to run WinUAE as administrator.

USB to teh win! :D

Yeah Macca, try running WinUAE from the command line and using the switch:

-disablehardrivesafetycheck

to get it to display the drives. Make sure you don't pick your Windows drive though!

I should add this info to the guide really...

Did you really read the original post? USB won't help.

Dont want to hijack this thread, but seems a good place to stick it. I have a 4.9gig (2.5) drive coming for my A1200 it has 3.1 roms, dont think this makes a difference to the drive size anyway. How do you set up say a 900meg partition for the WB side and the other 4gig partition to be used for games etc in Winuae? I can either plug it into the pc on a cable or I can use it as USB, does it matter which?

Many Thanks

EDIT: OPPPPSS nevermind just saw KG's Walkthrough. Fantastic guide KG :)

What do you mean Toni? Isn't it possible to connect a hd using a usb2ide adaptor and then after it beign recognized use it with winuae?

Of course you can connect with USB adapter but OP's problem isn't connection.

Magic command line parameter is always needed if the drive has PC partition table. Type of interface does not matter (IDE/SCSI/SATA/USB/whatever memory card etc..)

Thanks very much KG

Yes you should add it to the guide.. ;)

Very good guide - just realised I have a nice 20GB HD (rather than the 3GB that is currently connected) so I'm going to add that tomorrow.

Thank you all for the help!



M.

Hi

Got my 4.9g HD from ebay today. Rigged it up via usb. It was already formatted before it arrived in NTFS format.

I started winuae from the command line -diasbleharddrivesafetycheck

Winuae loaded up, I was able to select the drive via Add Harddrive. Followed KG'S guide by changing the HDtoolbox icon settings under information to uaehf.device. Load up hdtoolbox but the drive isnt shown?

I used the A1200 quickstart method within UAE to load the WB disk with the drive added in the options.


Any ideas anyone?

Cheers

Three reboots and it finally found it :)

More help needed I'm afraid.

I've now done the -disableharddrivesafetycheck

However when I click on Add Hard Drive a warning message saying that safety test has been disabled. After clicking okay a couple of times I get to choose the hard-drive I select it (its 40GB) I tick read/write, then click Add Hard Drive and then another couple of warning messages.

In the device list. The device is N/A and the volume is N/A. Then when I run WinUAE it doesn't seem to see the device.

Any ideas?

Cheers,


M.

i had the same problem as you can see above. I know mine was connected via USB and yours is not. But a few reboots fixed my problem. Might work for you as well :)

"It"=? N/A is correct.

What are you trying to do? (or do you even know what are you trying to do? :D) Have you ever partitioned real Amiga harddrive?

(sorry but I don't really know how to answer your question because it has no useful information)

Well im no expert. But I think he has the same problem I had. After changing the device in hdtoolbox information and running it. The drive just wouldnt show up. Im not sure if some drives are strange or whatever. But for me 3 reboots and all of a sudden it showed up, then I was able to partition it etc. But mine was USB so that is probably the reason. I have heard rebooting cures most USB HD errors.

Very strange indeed.

Right then..

I have gotten much further than before the reason why the hard drive wasn't working is because I was using two hard drives one as a mapped folder to a local drive.

Anyway now I have gotten to the part where I am trying to format it using SFSformat everytime I do it, it errors.

Any ideas?



M.

More (much more really) information please. AmigaOS version? Partition sizes? HDtoolbox version? Followed SFS installation guide exactly?

What is the error message?