WinUAE partitioned CF card not showing up in Workbench

[Kenan]

I followed this tutorial to the letter:
[ Show youtube player ]

It worked with my other CF cards using the CF card reader but on the new one I bought, the 2GB 133x Transcend, problem occurs.

I even used Diskpart to "clean" the card before starting the whole process.
After setting the uaehf.device in HD Toolbox and partioning the card (neither partiton had more then 1 gig) and rebooting, after the workbench loads up, the new hard disk ie. the 2 newly created partitions do not show up? Tried resetting, pulling the card out etc, but it's always the same thing.

I repeated the whole paritioning procces once again, but it still doesn't show up.

Anyone had a simmilar issue? This is quite frustrating. I prepped several other cards like this and this one, which I planned to setup before my IDE CF pack comes in, simply decided not to show up in Workbench.

[Kenan]

Also, when I try to "boot" from the CF card only, I get "No Disk Present in device DH0"?

[thomas]

Known (thanks Toni Wilen) problem of FFS: probably the first four bytes of the first block of the partition contain 0xffffffff.

Currently the only fix is to change the partition to SFS or PFS3 and then format it and (if you insist on FFS) change it back to FFS and format it again.

Or use a hex block editor to change the block.

Or use TSGUI or a similar imaging program to write a HDF to the card.

[thomas]

Just remembered that when I read Toni's analysis, I wrote this program to test it:

open a shell window and enter

killpart dh0: 0

DH0 should then appear as NDOS.

[fitzsteve]

Just to add, I watched the tutorial video, whilst this isn't your current problem he didn't show changing the max transfer value so if you followed it to the letter you've left the default value which will cause you problems later.

Under ''advanced settings' whilst partitioning (tick the box) you will see some extra options, one being Max Transfer, you must change this value to 0x1FE00 for all partitions and you must press 'enter' after you type the value or it wont be saved.

If you leave the defaults you will end up with corruptions whilst loading/transferring data and some games, etc wont work.

Good luck & follow Thomas' advice, he is the Guru of these things!

[Kenan]

^^Thanks for all the input. At the end, I did manage to make it appear in Workbench but only one (first) partition. Whatever I do with HDToolBox, it will only show one (functioning) partition. Now, this is not much of a big deal but it's kinda bothering me a little..I did manage to copy 210 Workbench on the CF card and use it to boot WinUAE A600 setup so it should work on my real A600 once I get the neccessary hardware.

[manic23]

I had a similar problem when I tried to partition an 8gb cf card with SFS, I had 2 4GB partitions all set up correctly with the max transfer set etc, worked fine in WinUAE but in my real Amiga A1200 only the first partition would show in workbench, although the HD Toolbox did show both, I just could ot get DH1 to work, I gave up in the end and went back to FFS on a 4GB card.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by manic23

I had a similar problem when I tried to partition an 8gb cf card with SFS, I had 2 4GB partitions all set up correctly with the max transfer set etc, worked fine in WinUAE but in my real Amiga A1200 only the first partition would show in workbench, although the HD Toolbox did show both, I just could ot get DH1 to work, I gave up in the end and went back to FFS on a 4GB card.

99% guaranteed you used UAE controller (uaehf.device), not IDE emulation and your A1200 has original ROM IDE driver that can't access >4G (with directscsi limit is ~7.8G)

Replace FFS with PFS3AIO and everything is fine again, no need for >4G patches.

[Kenan]

^^Hey Tony, my CF card is only 2GB and I did use the uaehf.device controller but that shouldn't be the reason why the other partition is not showing up (although it's there when viewed inside HDToolBox)? I also checked both partitions have "Automount" box checked.

[manic23]

Thanks for the tip, I will give PFS3AIO a try

[thomas]

Originally Posted by Kenan

^^Hey Tony, my CF card is only 2GB and I did use the uaehf.device controller but that shouldn't be the reason why the other partition is not showing up (although it's there when viewed inside HDToolBox)? I also checked both partitions have "Automount" box checked.

Probably the same "no disk in drive" problem as with the first partition. Did you try my program on these partitions?

[Kenan]

Yes, and here are the results:

I now get "No DOS disk present.." message when I try to boot from the card.

[thomas]

You should call the program with the name of the partition which does not show on the Workbench (probably DH1).

You should not destroy your boot partition. You can restore the boot partition if you run the program again like this:

killpart dh0: 444f5303

[Kenan]

Originally Posted by thomas

You should call the program with the name of the partition which does not show on the Workbench (probably DH1).

You should not destroy your boot partition. You can restore the boot partition if you run the program again like this:

killpart dh0: 444f5303

Oh it wasn't a big deal anyway!
I just want to figure out the missing partition, will listen to your advice, thanks.

[Kenan]

Hey, it worked! I got my second partition visible and ready to use (after I did the quickformat that is)!

Thanks Thomas, will keep that little program of yours as it's proven to be very handy.

[Uplink7]

Just tried this fix for the same issue with my A1200 and it worked as well. Thanks!

Bill