Moving WB installation from HDD to CF - Help required

[manicx]

Hi everyone

I bought a new CF adapter and 4GB card recently to replace my 3.5" 270GB HDD. My HDD is having 2 partitions, System and Work. System is where I have the WB installation and Work where I have programs and games.

I bought the CF adapter and card from Amigakit and the guys were great to partition it the way I asked, one partition 700GB for WB and the remaining (3GB) for programs and games. Both partitions are formatted in SFS.

I thought to do the transfer the 'dirty way' ie plug the HDD and CF to my PC and mount both in winUAE. With DOpus I managed to copy all files, I edited the user-startup and replaced references to DH0 and DH1 to ADH0 and ADH1 respectively and voila! Erm, almost....

Everything started well, no error messages but I got the message that you see in the attached image.

"Program 'Arq' has not yet returned. Should I wait some more?"

If I click no, I enter WB successfully. However, when I go to open HDToolBox and hit Change Drive Type, it still shows the drive to be a WDC drive, my old drive. When I tried to add the new (the CF) it asked me if I am sure since this will delete all data . Of course I clicked no.

Since this is the first time I do something like that, I am wondering:

a) Where does this info retrieved from? I mean how does WB and HDToolBox know I have a WDC HDD and not a Kingston CF card?

b) What can I do in my case? What is the best way to copy an existing WB installation from a HDD drive to a CF (and have proper info in HDToolBox) without reformating/repartitioning the drive.

c) How can I use HDToolBox with my CF Card from WinUAE?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[thomas]

"Program 'Arq' has not yet returned. Should I wait some more?"

Open the WBStartup drawer on your boot partition. Click once on the Arq icon so that it stays selected. Then right-click on the title bar of the screen and select Icon / Information from the menu. Click on Add next to the list of tool types. Enter DONOTWAIT into the text field and press enter so that the change is applied to the list. Then click on Save. The next time you boot, the message should not appear any more.

Where does this info retrieved from? I mean how does WB and HDToolBox know I have a WDC HDD and not a Kingston CF card?

HDToolbox asks the SCSI driver which drives are connected. You cannot "add" a drive in HDToolbox, you can only edit existing drives. If the CF card was never partitioned before it should be listed as an unknown drive in HDToolbox.

[manicx]

Originally Posted by thomas

HDToolbox asks the SCSI driver which drives are connected. You cannot "add" a drive in HDToolbox, you can only edit existing drives. If the CF card was never partitioned before it should be listed as an unknown drive in HDToolbox.

Thanks for your answer Thomas. I will try that later.

Regarding the above, my WD HDD is not connected to the Amiga (only the CF card that was/is actually partitioned as I said) and the info I see in HDToolBox (In 'change drive type' screen) is that of the WD HDD. On the very first screen, I can see the CF card and in partitions, I can see the partitions of the CF card properly. But when I am going to 'change drive type' and try to remove old WD HDD and add the new CF card (I am not sure if I need to do that anyway ie add the CF there) it allows me to do that (I can see two drives there, both the HDD and the CF even though the first is not connected) but if I choose to apply changes it warns me that all data will be lost. CF card was partitioned by Amigakit as requested by me and uses SFS. All I had to do was to hook it to a CF card reader in winUAE and copy files to the partitions as I had them before.

[fitzsteve]

@manicx

You don't need to change the drive type, Amigakit would have already set this up for you. As long as you clear the startup fault (I think Thomas has already given you the solution) then you should be all set.

The information you have when you go to HDToolBox is from when you setup your old drive, this information is saved and was rememberd when you copied workbench to your new CF, it does not mean your system thinks you have a WD HDD.

If you create a new definition for the CF card then you would see that also in the list however if you do that all the data would be lost so I suggest you don't do that unless you decide at some point you want to re-partition your CF.

All the best.

Steve.

[manicx]

Thanks. If I don't have to do that, I will sort out the Arq thingy and I am fine with it. I was just messing with HDToolBox and I was just worrying that it may affect the functionality somehow. But thank god!

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by manicx

Thanks. If I don't have to do that, I will sort out the Arq thingy and I am fine with it. I was just messing with HDToolBox and I was just worrying that it may affect the functionality somehow. But thank god!

Nope, it doesn't affect anything, I have a long list of all the different drives I've setup in my HDToolBox

All the best.

Steve.

[thomas]

Originally Posted by manicx

Regarding the above, my WD HDD is not connected to the Amiga (only the CF card that was/is actually partitioned as I said) and the info I see in HDToolBox (In 'change drive type' screen) is that of the WD HDD.

Ok, now I see what you mean. This screen lists all drive types of all drives you've prepared in the past. The information is stored in a file called "drive definitions" on the Install disk.

Actually nobody ever uses this list because it almost never happens in your life time that you install two identical drives. The usual action in this screen is always "define new" and then read the information from the drive rather than using one entry of the list.

As others have said already, it is not necessary to change the drive type. This action is similar to the "initialize" option in Windows' drive management. You do it once for a new drive and never again. Doing it again will indeed delete all data and all partitions from the drive.