Upgrading 4gb to 8gb non-destructive

[IvanEBC]

Hi Guys - me .. AGAIN!

Arrived today did my 8gb transcend. Cloned my Image from the 4gb to the 8gb, everything was expected.

I want to interchange its use between WINUAE and my real A4000.
It already has PFS3_aio-handler v18.5 installed on the 250mb DH0: and 3.7gb DH1:

I read (but for the life of me cannot find) that you can edit the RDB to simply use the rest of the room and it wouldn't be destructive (like manually editing the last cylinder??) ... or i'm happy to wipe DH1 and resize and re(quick)format so it is 7.7gb (sounds safer and easier)

I think i'm all setup to do that and should work with my OS (3.1) my filesystem (PFS). When i loaded up the HDtoolbox, i can see my CF card but it looks exactly like my 4gb - was hoping to see spare space at the end and i could just extend the arrow to the end of the drive....

How do i go about this, i don't care much if it is destructive to DH1: But i want to leave DH0: Alone and untouched.

Thanks.

[Daedalus]

Personally I'd be wary of any method for non-destructive editing of partitions. But you can edit partitions without affecting other partitions, so your DH0: should be left intact. HDToolbox should give you spare space at the end however, so perhaps cloning wasn't the best way to go as it has copied over the RDB as well. Why not take an image of the 4GB drive, load that in WinUAE, and set up the 8GB from scratch, copying the contents over after you've partitioned and formatted it?

[thomas]

Originally Posted by IvanEBC

I read (but for the life of me cannot find) that you can edit the RDB to simply use the rest of the room and it wouldn't be destructive (like manually editing the last cylinder??) ... or i'm happy to wipe DH1 and resize and re(quick)format so it is 7.7gb (sounds safer and easier)

You cannot resize a partition without data loss.

To make the additional space available to HDToolbox you can use this: http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/fixhddsize

You can add a new partition (DH2) to that space or delete/recreate DH1.

That said, I think with PFS3 it is possible to add more space to a partition. First change the partition size in HDToolbox, then run the DiskValid tool which comes with PFS3 to fix the partition. But this procedure will not increase the space reserved to the directory. PFS3 reserves a certain percentage of the size of the partition for the directory. This is done during quick-format. It cannot be changed later. So if you store a lot of small files on the partition, you might run out of directory blocks some time.

[IvanEBC]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Personally I'd be wary of any method for non-destructive editing of partitions. But you can edit partitions without affecting other partitions, so your DH0: should be left intact. HDToolbox should give you spare space at the end however, so perhaps cloning wasn't the best way to go as it has copied over the RDB as well. Why not take an image of the 4GB drive, load that in WinUAE, and set up the 8GB from scratch, copying the contents over after you've partitioned and formatted it?

So i can literally do that and even copy the DH0: files with Workbench over?
Reason i chose clone was simply - it was a complete pain in my ass to setup the PFS and said to myself, i'll never want to do that again, and that was 3 weeks ago hahaha

Sorry - wanted to add, i still don't mind destroying DH1: I see in HDtoolbox, i could delete the dh1: - if the spare dspace doesn't go up to 7.7gb, then i would just need to manipulate the number of cylinders, wasn't sure how to get those numbers, gotta be easier to do that than a compeltel install and copy again.

[Daedalus]

Yep, once the partitions are set up you can just copy the contents file-for-file and it will effectively be a clone. Use the command:

Copy Workbench1:#? ALL Workbench2:

from the Shell. The Clone keyword can be added to preserve file timestamps too. Oh, and make sure your partitions have different device names and volume names just to be safe.

Reading the configuration of the card in HDToolbox should give you the correct geometry, though if you're using an old version (pre-OS3.5) it won't show you the correct drive size. The geometry should still be correct for 8GB though and the free space should all be there to use. Doing this will probably destroy all partitions though so make sure you have the 4GB image up and running first.

[IvanEBC]

Thats actually where i run into hassles before and got quite frustrated... as how on earth does one get to know the identifier numbers and stuff... i might just start playing and see where it gets me

[Daedalus]

You shouldn't have to mess with any of the identifier or geometry numbers - setting up the card from scratch, HDToolbox should read the correct values from the card and that should be it. Editing the geometry without knowing the correct values is an easy way to cause problems further down the line. In HDToolbox there's a function for defining a new drive type or something along those lines that reads the drive's geometry and populates all the values correctly. That should give you close to 8GB of free space for you to partition.

[IvanEBC]

Deed is done - thank you for your help tonight.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

. The Clone keyword can be added to preserve file timestamps too.

Clone should always be used, it preserves the protection bits and file comments too.

[IvanEBC]

Just quickly visited, i didn't understand initially the clone keyword and where it should go, probably best to have written that in if important, as i didn't do it, well it works on a real Amiga so i guess i got out of that for now.

[daxb]

CLONE is an argument (switch) of the copy command.

Template of copy is:

FROM/M,TO/A,ALL/S,QUIET/S,BUF=BUFFER/K/N,CLONE/S,DATES/S,NOPRO/S,COM/S,NOREQ/S:

Example:

Copy DH0: TO DH1: ALL QUIET CLONE

[Daedalus]

Clone keeps some extra information with the file, such as timestamps, comments and protection bits. Without this keyword the file dates will be set to when the copy happened and the protection bits to the standard rwed. This is fine for 90% of things including the OS so you're fine. Some software requires particular protection bits set to work properly though so it's required if you're copying them - it's mainly scripting and ARexx type setups that I've found to be sensitive to having specific protection bits set.