My tested procedure to prepare a large HD (7GB) for a 8GB CF

[Quaxo76]

Hi all,
So after struggling a bit I managed to setup my 8GB CF card for my A1200. It has two partitions, a small one for WB and a large one (6.5GB more or less) for games and data.
Since I had some problems setting it up, and it wasn't easy to find a detailed description of all the steps in a single guide, here's the procedure I followed, in the hope that it could help someone. I can't of course guarantee that it will work for others, but it worked well for me, YMMV.
I went for ClassicWB because it's easy and pretty feature-rich and fast. I used ClassicWB FULL but other versions should be fine too.


- Download the ClassicWB image, attach it to FS_UAE and boot it.
- Install the needed files from the WB disks by following the on-screen instructions
- After the ClassicWB is bootable and working, configure it to your liking (i.e. add your WHDLoad key, add the Kickstart files to devs:kickstarts, install the drivers for PCMCIA CF reader, or accelerators, or other peripherals
- Once the ClassicWB image file is ready and working, it's time to prepare the large HD image file that will eventually contain the whole system.
- From FS_UAE, create a new HDF image. Choose the RDB option, and choose a name and size. I chose 7168 MB, because 7GB=7*1024MB. I didn't use 8GB because a 8GB CF card doesn't really have 8GB of space, and 7GB is plenty for me anyway.
- Now on FS_UAE, attach the newly created HDF file as first HD, and the smaller ClassicWB one as second HD.
- Start the emulator. The first drive is non bootable so the emulator will boot from the second HD into the ClassicWB.
- Now you have to copy the Smart File System to the system disk: copy the file MyFiles/LargeHD/128GB_Support/SFS_v1_279/SmartFilesystem to sys:L
- Now you have to actually tell the system to use that filesystem, using HDInstTools. But first you have to change the scsi driver of HDInstTools, or it won't see the drive. To do so, open MyFiles/LargeHD/Tools/HDInstTools, right click on the HDInstTools program icon, choose "info", go to "ToolTypes", and change the line "DEVICE=scsi.device" to "DEVICE=uaehf.device", confirm with Enter, then Save. Now you can run HDInstTools.
- A word of advice: I have been unable to have HDInstTools "see" more than one drive, it only sees the first one. So, once we start preparing the new disk image, we will have to finish preparing it without rebooting, because otherwise upon reboot, it will boot from the large (still empty) drive, and then complain that there is no OS on it; or if you swap the two drives in FS_UAE, you will boot the ClasscWB image but will then be unable to work on the new file with HDInstTools. Just don't reboot until instructed to do so.
- On HDInstTools, we have to add the SFS file system. Choose the File System button. On the new page, click on ADD, point to the SmartFilesystem file that you previously copied on L.
- On the new window that opens, change the Dos Type field to "SFS\0", the default is wrong. Confirm with Use. Now on the FileSystem page you will see both FFS International version 40.1 and SFS version 1.279. Confirm with "Use".
- Now we have to partition the HD image. On the main HDInstTools window, click on "Partition drive".
- Create a first system partition, I made it about 400MB, and a second partition for data. I made it almost as big as the remaining empty space ("almost" because I left a few unclaimed MB of space, because I read somewhere that it helps with the CF's wear leveling). For each partition you will have to change some settings as follows, by selecting the partition and then clicking on "edit partition":
- For the system partition, enter the desired name, then set MaxTransfer to 0x1FE00, and Buffers to 100. As a file system I left FFS Inter, because I've read that it helps if you will want to read the CF in a computer. Remember to confirm every value by pressing "Enter": if you just click into the next field, the change won't "stick".
- Don't name the first partition "System", or the system will get confused when you have to format and clone it, since also the active ClassicWB partition is called "system".

- For the second partition, enter the desired name, MaxTransfer to 0x1FE00, Buffers to 100, and FileSystem to Custom, and DosType to SFS\0.
- Now you can confirm the changes, click on Save Changes to Drive, and reboot the system.
- Upon reboot, the system won't start, because it will try to boot from the first drive (which is still non-DOS). That's OK, just swap the drives on FS_UAE so the new one is the second drive. Reboot into ClassicWB.
- To format the new SFS partition, there is a command inside System/SFS/Shell called sfsformat. Open the shell, navigate to system/SFS/Shell and run the command "sfsformat drive [drive_name]: name [chosen_name]"
where drive_name is the partition name that you chose before, and chosen_name is the name of your choice (they can also be the same).
- To format the smaller system partition, you can do it simply from Workbench, as a regular partition, if it is FFS. If you made it SFS, use the same command as above.
- Now you can transfer the WB system from the ClassicWB image, to your new system partition. Use the command:
copy from sourcename:#? to targetname: all clone quiet
This will copy the whole OS to the new partition. Sourcename is the name of ClassicWB's system partition (usually System and targetname is the name you chose for your new partition. That's why the names have to be different.
- Now you can shut down the system, remove the ClassicWB image from FS_UAE and only assign your new 7GB file, and reboot. You will see the Scalos Workbench desktop, and the icon for the data partition, where you can now copy all the files you want in the usual ways.

- To flash this new file to a real 8GB CF to use in a real Amiga, I used the Linux dd command, since I don't have Windows. The command I used is
sudo dd if=[image file] of=/dev/sd[?] bs=1M status=progress
where "image file" is the hdf file just prepared, and "/dev/sd[?]" is where your system "sees" the CF file. I don't know what the procedure would be to flash the file to CF with other operating systems.


Whew. Took longer to write this down than to actually do it (though researching *how* to do it took me weeks).




Now I actually have a question. I said I left the system partition as FFS International, for compatibility. But then I read that FFS is less "robust" and needs frequent re-validations. Is this true? Should I have made both SFS?


Cristian

[thebajaguy]

Upon power up, or boot, FFS partitions are validated by the FastFileSystem. Larger partitions take more time. Increasing the partition block size helps reduce the amount of blocks that need validation. It also reduces the at-boot-time memory needed to do that validation. The OS needs to keep the disk bitmap in RAM, so that part is one of the negatives of FFS - it's memory footprint. It's not that bad for the <16GB ranges, though. Get into the 64GB or more disk spaces, and that's a lot.

That being said, flash media should be partitioned with a block size of 4096, or a ^2 of that value, as it reduces the media wear, as 4K blocks are a typical flash media internal base block.

Within the realm of 4-16GB flash media, 4K is a reasonable size to go with in all cases. IF you are planning a larger partion for large-sized files, then 8K is a better choice. Smaller block size = more wasted space if the file is not an even multiple of the block size. Larger block size = more data/block. On mechanical drives, it actually reduces fragmentation somewhat (and is not an issue on flash meda).

[Jope]

How do you factor in partition alignment for those 4k blocks? The geometry will be based on 512k blocks, does the 3.2 HDTB calculate a suitable geometry so that the partition that begins after the RDB will be aligned?