Getting my Amiga setup to work from PC hdd

Hello English Amiga Board chaps! A singular reason for joining is just to ask a question of the fount of knowledge that you undoubtedly all are.

I have an Amiga (Really? Wow. Didn't see that coming - Ed) and I have copied the contents of its MASSIVE 1.4gb hard drive to my PC.

However despite my hopes I can't boot from these directories on my PC with UAE.

I'm unable to make a hardfile of the hard drive due to a bad sector about half way through.

Anyone be able to help me sort this out? When starting up it keeps saying 'unknown command' a lot during startup.

I can boot from the amiga hard though and use the PC directories.

Help would be much appreciated.

[fitzsteve]

Try using WinImage to create a virtual image of the Hard Drive and see if that works for you with WinUAE

(WinImage VHD's work just fine as Hard Files with WinUAE, I'm not sure how it handles bad sectors though)

WinUAE can make a hard disk image but gets stuck half way due to the bad sector so I expect the same from that. I'll give it a go though. Thanks!

Winimage didn't seem to even recognise the drive.

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by DerekJDB

Winimage didn't seem to even recognise the drive.

Strange on my system it sees all drives connected to the PC, how are you connecting it?

Did you start WinImage as 'Administrator'? I don't mean only using an Administrator account, physically right clicking and Run as 'Admin.'

Also with USB readers and converters you might need to hot plug them to get them to show up or try browsing a couple of times at the screen where you pick the drive and they might show up the next time.

It might be the USB connection to the drive is a little dodgy.

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by DerekJDB

It might be the USB connection to the drive is a little dodgy.

With my USB reader they don't always show up the first time, I have to wait about 10 seconds and then try to pick the drive again

If it means anything to you it doesn't show up in windows either. Only in Win UAE

[subert]

Have same problems with similar programs for image maker.Sometimes my dvd gone from win drives.

[andy2004]

How about creating a hdd image through Winuae, of whatever size you want, 1.4gb by the sounds of it or bigger, and then using a amiga wb floppy image .adf file to boot up and gain access the winuae hdd, and then copy the files from the PC hdd to the amiga hdd image.
Then restart Winuae with the hdd image.

No bad sectors then.

[prowler]

Originally Posted by fitzsteve

Try using WinImage to create a virtual image of the Hard Drive and see if that works for you with WinUAE

(WinImage VHD's work just fine as Hard Files with WinUAE, I'm not sure how it handles bad sectors though)

Hi Steve,

Earlier this week, I tried creating a hardfile from an AmigaDOS FFS-formatted ZIP Disk with bad sectors using WinImage 8.50 (Registered), and it quit as soon as it encountered the first bad sector. (I had previously dumped good hardfiles from some other Zip Disks with no bad sectors.)

Next, I tried dumping the bad ZIP Disk again using Active@ Disk Image 4.0.4 (Registered). Active@ Disk Image offers retries when bad sectors are found. This time it was successful, but all bad sectors which could not be recovered were zeroed out in the hardfile as you would expect.