Transferring an AmigaOS 3.1 install to a larger HDD?

[teh_Foxx0rz]

Hi there everyone, first post here.

Recently, I was lucky enough to be able to pick up an Amiga 1200. It was a loft clearout that the guy hadn't touched since seemingly the late '90s, except just to test and try out things after getting it out of the loft.

As such, it still had his original install on it: AmigaOS 3.1 (Release 40.42) with Magic Workbench and lots of WHDLoad games, on a 420MB hard drive (amusingly, a 3.5" one, which was quite a cosy fit in the case) (It also has Kickstart 3.0 ROMs)

While I know there are plenty of modern options and solutions for AmigaOS/Workbench for the A1200, I was wanting to transfer this specific installation to something larger, so I can continue the use of it as it lasted this long. I also know that CompactFlash cards can be used, but I had a pair of 6GB 2.5" hard drives lying around, and saw it mentioned that the Amiga can read hard drives of up to 8GB, as long as the partitions are below 4GB. I like the idea of hearing the drive activity of a disk drive as well, while they're still working

However, upon trying to boot it up after formatting the new drive on FFS partitions and copy/cloning the files over with the command line to the new partitions, it just seemed to hang on the splash screen. I made sure to have the OS partition to be very small (below 100MB) and the others less than 2GB for good measure.

I tried installing PFS3 as the file system before formatting and copying the files over, but that didn't seem able to boot it at all. I'm aware that there need to be some extensions to the Kickstart to make use of the benefits that PFS3 brings, but it's not been quite clear to me how to install those, or if I even need them to use a 6GB drive.

I've since read that even if FFS can read a large hard drive it still has to scan it all, so maybe my original attempt would boot if I left it long enough, but it's not very practical for it to take that long, of course.

I have been using these drives successfully, but only with a raw HDD image of the original written to them. Obviously, that's still in practice only a 420MB hard drive, and I'd like to make the most of these larger drives.


So, to summarise, my question:
How can I go about transferring an old AmigaOS 3.1 installation to a 6GB hard drive?


And, secondarily, I added a third connector to a short 44-pin IDE cable, hoping I could simply attach both the hard drives, jumper one to be secondary, and partition, format and copy the files directly from one to the other. However, while this lets me partition the secondary drive from the working install, the partitions don't show up on the workbench for me to be able to format and copy the files over to them.
I can use a CompactFlash card as an intermediary along with a workbench floppy, to let me swap out the drives so I can format and copy the files over to the new partitions, but while this works, I'm confused as to why having both drives on the same IDE cable doesn't seem to be working as I would have expected.

I have a bit of experience with the Amiga in general; I've worked my way up through the other three wedge Amigas trying to get to the point where I can use an internal hard drive, but had no end of issues along the way with those, so I was very pleased that an A1200 could come my way. Besides this (ultimately self-imposed) obstacle, it's been a breeze to work with and use.
(And yes, I have replaced the capacitors. Barely any leakage, thankfully!)

Hope this is all clear, and thanks for any help.

[thomas]

Originally Posted by teh_Foxx0rz

hoping I could simply attach both the hard drives, jumper one to be secondary, and partition, format and copy the files directly from one to the other.

That's the way to go.

However, while this lets me partition the secondary drive from the working install, the partitions don't show up on the workbench

If you look carefully at the list of harddrives in HDToolbox, you'll see that the first/old drive appears as changed. If you select it, HDToolbox will tell you that harddrives have been added or removed and asks you if it should save the changes. If you let it save the changes, the partitions of the second/new harddrive will appear after a reboot.

saw it mentioned that the Amiga can read hard drives of up to 8GB, as long as the partitions are below 4GB.

That's not really true. The drive size limit is 4GB. The partition size limit usually is the harddrive size. Only with a properly installed file system which supports direct-SCSI it is possible to read up to 8000MB (which is a little less than 8GB).

it just seemed to hang on the splash screen.

Can you please define "splash screen". If the harddrive is not recognised, it shows the insert-disk animation. If it is recognised and attempts to boot, then the screen remains black until Workbench appears. There usually is no splash screen of any kind. Unless you installed a program which shows a boot picture. Then this screen falls into the same category as "remains black..."

[teh_Foxx0rz]

Originally Posted by thomas

If you look carefully at the list of harddrives in HDToolbox, you'll see that the first/old drive appears as changed. If you select it, HDToolbox will tell you that harddrives have been added or removed and asks you if it should save the changes. If you let it save the changes, the partitions of the second/new harddrive will appear after a reboot.

Hmm, it warns of it wiping the partitions if I save changes of the old hard drive. But I see. Perhaps it'll work if I use the original drive rather than the image of the original drive on this 2.5" drive. I was avoiding it since it gets quite cumbersome.

Originally Posted by thomas

That's not really true. The drive size limit is 4GB. The partition size limit usually is the harddrive size. Only with a properly installed file system which supports direct-SCSI it is possible to read up to 8000MB (which is a little less than 8GB).

Got it. Where can I find information on how to properly install a file system which supports direct-SCSI, and would things then work if I copy the installation over to that?

Originally Posted by thomas

Can you please define "splash screen". If the harddrive is not recognised, it shows the insert-disk animation. If it is recognised and attempts to boot, then the screen remains black until Workbench appears. There usually is no splash screen of any kind. Unless you installed a program which shows a boot picture. Then this screen falls into the same category as "remains black..."

I mean the screen which shows while the OS is booting. I suppose not all AmigaOS/WB installs might have one actually. But this one says "AmigaOS 3.1" and a few other bits of information, on a background of clouds, while it's booting. What I was talking about was that it would hang on that screen if I tried booting from the the new drive with FFS partitions after copying the installation over to it. But it did definitely read and try booting from the hard drive. Perhaps it's, as you say, a program which shows a boot picture.

[teh_Foxx0rz]

So, I tried some more things out.

I did a fresh install of AmigaOS 3.1 to the larger hard drive, all defaults, and...it seemed to boot up just fine, despite this being a 6GB hard drive. Not all of it is formatted currently, but that's not specifically relevant here, since...

If I then copy the original installation on the smaller drive over to replace this functioning installation, using the same partitioning, it still hangs on booting, at the splash screen. I've got a CompactFlash adapter and 2GB card I tested now as well as the two 6GB 2.5" hard drives, and it's the same story there too.

Both 3.1 versions are the same revision, 40.42.
Of course, the original installation has a whole lot else installed along side it; maybe some of those are causing some issues on the new drive?

It would be nice if I could copy just the extra things over to the working installation, but I know that they're scattered across the different system folders so that could be a tedious and futile affair. And if it is a problem with one of these extra things, then I'd still have the problem.

A complication though is that I can't seem to get the original hard drive and any of the other hard drive options I have available to be detected by the system when plugged in together (of course making sure the jumpers are set correctly, at least as far as I can tell). I'm sure I've managed to get the original drive and a 6GB one to function together before; it's strange. But since the original is a 3.5" hard drive, it requires a bit of a mess of cables and adapters, so perhaps there's some complication going on there (but I have tried different cable/adapter configurations).

So, I know that AmigaOS 3.1 r40.42 can function on these larger drives. It's just a matter of figuring out how to get it to successfully boot once the original installation is copied over to it...

Would there be any kind of troubleshooting process I could do to narrow down where this problem lies?

[thomas]

Check S/Startup-Sequence for the software which displays the splash screen and temporarily disable it. It probably hides the error message which would help you to resolve the issue. The actual issue probably is a reference to a volume name which does not exist on the new harddrive.

And please don't do trial and error with large harddrives. There will be no error message. It's just that read and write accesses will wrap around at the 4GB limit so that different parts of partitions share the same area on the physical harddrive. This can work unrecognised for years but once they hit each other you'll get corrupted files or NDOS partitions or complete data loss.

Here is a program which can give you information about configuration errors: http://thomas-rapp.homepage.t-online.../hddreport.lha

[LieboLBX]

Originally Posted by teh_Foxx0rz

So, I tried some more things out.

Did you figure it out?

[teh_Foxx0rz]

Alright, I've finally had a chance to take another look at this.

I wasn't really aware of the Startup-Sequence so I hadn't looked in there. Turns out it has a lot of specific volume references. And in formatting a new drive, I'd "corrected" the quirk it had that DH1: was in fact the boot volume (and first on the disk) with DH0: being the secondary volume. And as I'm sure many are all too familiar with, when you try to fix quirks in old stuff, it tends to actually break things. So I formatted the new drive with the volume labels the same way around, and that seems to get it to boot!
Thank you for the pointer there.

So, this could probably work with a smaller-capacity drive like the CF cards I have, if need-be, but I'd still like to prepare it to use with the 6GB slim HDD I have set aside for it.
I've gone and partitioned/formatted that with PFS3, however, following guides, it seems like I need to update scsi.device. However, in DEVS: where it seems like I should find it, this installation doesn't appear to have that for me to supercede with the updated one. Attached is what it does have.

I suppose I could just go ahead and try it out, but I'm wondering if there's anything else that this installation could be using instead of that, that might cause problems if I try to run this without identifying and sorting out that potential other thing. I don't think squirrelscsi.device is related, as I know what SquirrelSCSI is (and unfortunately don't have), but hardfile.device sounds harddrive related, or maybe mfm.device.
I certainly don't know. I couldn't identify anything that looked hard drive/SCSI related in the various startup-sequence files this installation has, either.

Any advice here?

[thomas]

Originally Posted by teh_Foxx0rz

I've gone and partitioned/formatted that with PFS3

I already mentioned above that with PFS3AIO you can use up to 8GB without an updated scsi.device.

[teh_Foxx0rz]

Ah so I'm already all set? Nice.

It also occurred to me that the original scsi.device is actually probably in Kickstart itself.

Now to look at fixing or reinstalling WHDLoad on here hehe, but that'll be a separate thread if needed.

Thanks for the help!

[teh_Foxx0rz]

Hmm, I have run into one more hitch; something about this is eating up heaps of RAM and (with no expansions) I only end up with ~200,000B.

Part of that is that this has Magic Workbench with its fancy icons and I'm running it in VGA mode, but I don't remember having this problem when playing around on the original hard drive in the same situation. Some of the WHDLoad games which were on here already and working on that drive are complaining about a lack of free RAM now.

Plugging in a CF card to the PCMCIA slot (with the driver for that installed) also seems to drop me from 200,000B to only around 60,000B, meaning I can barely even navigate into any folders, let alone copy stuff.

It seems a bit better if I delete the partitions past the original two this installation has, but not really enough to avoid the problems.

Is PFS3 more RAM-hungry than FFS, or something?

I've just ordered the RAM expansion I was going to get anyway, so that ought to give me more headroom, hopefully, but it still seems strange what's happening.

[Rochabian]

Yes if you set 30 buffers per parttions with PFS3 it's equal to 150 buffers with other filesystems, so it eat more RAM than FFS, but is faster

[teh_Foxx0rz]

Ooh okay yeah, I didn't know enough to want to alter that, but would it be a good idea to reduce the buffers a bit then?

I did also see it mentioned elsewhere that PFS3 stores the partition metadata in RAM and that it takes up more space with larger partitions. I made one 4095MB partition and wondered if that would have any drawbacks; maybe that's one, so perhaps I should split that up as well? Or would two 2048MB partitions add up to make the metadata RAM usage the same? :P

[teh_Foxx0rz]

Alright, I reduced the buffers to 6 to be equivalent to 30 in other file systems based on Rochabian's numbers there, and yeah, this leaves me with just under a meg of stock RAM to work with, while not really performing any slower in my perception. Still not enough to properly get going with WHDLoad, but should let me poke around and tinker with some things until my RAM expansion arrives!

Thanks again everyone!

[Doc Mindie]

Originally Posted by teh_Foxx0rz

Alright, I reduced the buffers to 6 to be equivalent to 30 in other file systems based on Rochabian's numbers there, and yeah, this leaves me with just under a meg of stock RAM to work with, while not really performing any slower in my perception. Still not enough to properly get going with WHDLoad, but should let me poke around and tinker with some things until my RAM expansion arrives!

Thanks again everyone!

I think you should invest in some FastRAM, or even an accelerator, as you will need it for WHDload most of the time. Some Fast also frees up your Chip mem so you can get better use of the graphics of the A1200.

If I may, I can personally recommend one of the ACA cards for the A1200, though expensive they are also rocksolid and gives a shedload of Fast, especially the 030 ones.

I have also heard TerribleFire cards are very good, these don't boast as many bells and whistles as the ACAs but those that have them seems incredibly happy indeed.

Best thing about going for an 030 based card, is that for the most part, they have the memory allocated above the Z-II memory space, meaning you can use the PCMCIA slot without any issues. And that is why I do recommend an 030 based card over especially "pure" memory expansions where the 8MB Fast conflicts with the PCMCIA and renders it unusable while all 8 MB is active

[Yesideez]

If you're not planning on adding anything else there's no reason not to use one of the HDs in the machine but just be aware that modern CF/SD cards draw almost no power compared to an actual drive. With the PSU being old anything too heavy can strain it and cause issues.

I've put a 256GB HD inside my A1200 and I've used FFS for the boot partition (DH0: ) and PFS3aio for all other partitions.

Personally, what I would do to back this up is buy a simple IDE to USB adaptor and plug it into your PC. Run WinUAE as administrator and add it to the setup. Once WinUAE picks it up it'll prompt you if you want to back it up. Say yes and it'll create a HDF (hard drive file) which'll be a direct rip of the drive.

After that, you can set up one of your new 6GB drives connecting it like you did that old original 3.5" drive. Once you've partitioned the drive as you like it, clear the drives from WinUAE and add the HDF image you made from the original drive. Now, add the 2.5" IDE drive and let it boot up. As you added the HDF first that's the drive that'll boot.

Next, open a Shell window and type in INFO to get a list of the partitions and their device labels. You'll need to check these out as the partition labels can be identical but it'll be the device label that won't be. If both HDs are set to DH0: for the Workbench partition, the first added HD will be mounted as DH0: and the second drive will be auto-renamed to DH0_1: allowing you to tell them apart.

Once that's confirmed, type in:
1.SYS> copy dh0:#? all dh0_1: clone

Just let it copy all the files. Minimise the window height to make it run faster. Once done, repeat for the other partitions and you're done.

As for a way to get extra RAM go for an ACA accelerator. I've got the ACA1233/40 in one of my machines and if you want to do a little more than play games, I recommend the PiStorm route. I've got one of those in another A1200 and that's the one with a 256GB HD and it runs in 1080p in full color.

Compatibility has come a long way since it first came out and I've not come across anything that crashes it.

PS. The reason for DH0: as FFS and the rest as PFS3aio is if there's a problem with the drive, FFS will still boot allowing me ton run diagnostic and repair tools.

PPS. One last thing to remember re memory. All those fancy graphics need to be stored in Chip RAM (the internal memory) which will be another reason why you're low on RAM. All those icons etc. eat that up. Extra RAM will help but RTG via a PiStorm will remedy it completely. I boot my machine up and I've got nearly the full 2MB of chip RAM available because the RTG handles all of the gfx in the RAM of the gfx driver called Picasso 96.

[zipper]

>>1.SYS> copy dh0:#? all dh0_1: clone

I'd add quiet to the string, goes faster...