Can an A4000 hard disk be set to read only?

[Starglider 2]

Hi all, I'm going to be shipping those team17 hard disks in the Amiga 4000 to a museum shortly. I would like to set the hard disks to read-only, as agreed with them, so that none of the original Worms files can be edited or overwritten. The same goes for all the folders on the disk. Is there a simple way to simply set the whole hard disk to read only? I seem to have forgotten how to do that over the past 25 years lol.

[lilalurl]

Approved your thread and moved it to this sub-forum (not sure if it was the best or support.hardware might have been).

[mark_k]

Sadly there's no way in the IDE specification to do that.

Simply booting the machine with a drive attached will almost certainly cause it to be written to, even if you don't consciously do that.

As an alternative, I would create image files of each complete drive (as you probably did already), keep them somewhere safe along with hashes of the image files, and don't access the drives again.

(By the way, some USB-IDE adapters can be really flaky, meaning data read can be silently corrupted. When imaging it's worth doing twice and comparing the resulting image files to verify they are identical. And maybe using more than one different USB-IDE adapter to do that.)

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Starglider 2

I would like to set the hard disks to read-only, as agreed with them, so that none of the original Worms files can be edited or overwritten.

Not on a physical level, but on a software level, you can "lock" a partition such that writes are declined. However, this change is not permanent and does not persist booting.

[van_dammesque]

A possible hardware solution, but it not loyal to the actual hardware strictly speaking is to burn the contents to a DVD/CD and use that in the machine if it is to be interacted with. The original hardware could in the machine but disconnected.

Just a thought.

[Konrad]

If it's that important to you, then I would clone the harddrive 1:1
Harddisks don't cost much these days. (You can clone to a bigger harddisk. Doesn't matter.)
If the original harddisks get modified you can clone back from your backup, again 1:1.

[Starglider 2]

Thanks everyone.

It's going to a museum so I won't be in control of cloning or restoring etc.

Probably simpler if I just mark the important folders as read only. Can that work, on a folder level, and apply to all contents... Or do I have to set each file to read only.

[Jope]

Just make an image of it, back that image up elsewhere, make sure you don't write to them. Once it's out of your hands, there's no guarantee that no-one will mess with the drive's contents..

[Starglider 2]

Originally Posted by Jope

Just make an image of it, back that image up elsewhere, make sure you don't write to them. Once it's out of your hands, there's no guarantee that no-one will mess with the drive's contents..

Oh I have images. And it's in the donation contract not to change the drive contents. However it's on me to make them read only to help that happen. I think I'm looking at just setting the files one by one.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by Starglider 2

Oh I have images. And it's in the donation contract not to change the drive contents. However it's on me to make them read only to help that happen. I think I'm looking at just setting the files one by one.

Something like:

PROTECT Work:TEAM17/#? w SUB

Should do the trick.

I wouldn't set any of the OS dirs/files to read only.

[meynaf]

In WHAT will the drive be mounted ?
If it's not mounted at all, then it does not have to be read only.
If it's mounted on some peecee, then it could be mounted read only (emulators can normally do this).
If it's mounted on some miggy, then it may eventually boot on this disk and therefore altering the startup sequence to lock the partition may be a solution.

[Matt_H]

Since there’s no way to do it in hardware, use the AmigaDOS Lock command.

Just tack

Lock DH0: ON

to the end of user-startup and that should do it.
Of course you’ll need a few lines to cover all the other partitions and obviously this will only cover drives actively mounted in the system. It can be circumvented through Early Startup Control, but it should be enough to prevent accidental deletions/moves by your average amateur.

[tech3475]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Something like:

PROTECT Work:TEAM17/#? w SUB

Should do the trick.

I wouldn't set any of the OS dirs/files to read only.

I wonder if some method could also be implemented to detect if the permissions have been changed?

For example, maybe include a line in the startup-sequence to create or delete a file (obviously created by the OP themselves) which should otherwise be protected.

That way if the file goes missing you know something has been changed.

Of course any changes like this should be commented in case someone things Team 17 did this.

[mark_k]

I wouldn't mess around with trying to change protection bits or use the Lock command. Changing protection bits in particular would cause thousands of writes to the drive. Not really something you want to be doing with old possibly-flaky hardware.

Why not just never actually connect the original drives again? Get some other IDE drives (or e.g. CF to IDE adapters) and write the image files to them. Then you could connect those to real hardware if needed.

[lmimmfn]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

Not on a physical level, but on a software level, you can "lock" a partition such that writes are declined. However, this change is not permanent and does not persist booting.

If it were me I'd use a CF for the boot drive, update startup script to lock the other drive and add the lib/sys etc. mounts for other drive along with any other specific patches for mmu etc.

Solves the issue of not destroying the data and keeping the OS separate for reinstall if required and keeping a copy of the boot CF.
Any maintenance support should just be rewriting the CF from backup. Depending on support frequency have additional CF just to handover and rewrite the current CF with issues when required.

Otherwise just put everything on CF and replace with backup CF when required. Long term I wouldn't rely on original HD's.

[Starglider 2]

Thanks guys. I'm talking about the original A4000 from my video about it, and its original drives. There's something that doesn't sit right with me using clone drives in a museum, but the Lock command sounds like a reasonable option. Thanks!

[Estrayk]

The harddrive isnt important! The information inside YES. So, make 2 o 3 copies of all files and structure dirs and forget it.

[Starglider 2]

Originally Posted by Estrayk

The harddrive isnt important! The information inside YES. So, make 2 o 3 copies of all files and structure dirs and forget it.

Of course. As stated, we have backups of everything. But I don't want to send it to a museum and have the original Worms cutscenes altered. Just my preference as the donor. ?

[ElectroBlaster]

Originally Posted by Jope

Just make an image of it, back that image up elsewhere, make sure you don't write to them. Once it's out of your hands, there's no guarantee that no-one will mess with the drive's contents..

Exactly the same thought popped into my frazzled brain!

Clone the original and keept it!

Lock the contents of the clone, re-fit into the Amiga.

[LocalH]

There exist hardware "write blockers" that are most commonly used in forensic work. There exist IDE-to-IDE blockers. Unsure as to cost, or as to whether they could be specified as part of the contract. Also unsure how they'd perform specifically with the Amiga. But depending on the difficulty in locating one, it may be the preferred option.