Revisiting SFS and other filesystems in HDFs

[Bloodwych]

A long time ago I made a thread about creating a HDF using the SFS filesystem for Workbench 3.0/3.1 and at the time couldn't get it to work.

Today I thought I'd give it another go and was successful at creating and formating an SFS HDF but it was as messy as doing it on a real Amiga.

What I had to do was:

1. Create a 200MB HDF as normal. Selected SFS identifier.
2. First I had it mounted as DH1: and ran Worknbench from DH0:, but it was impossible to access DH1: as HDtoolbox (using uaehf.device) always wrote to DH0: regardless.
3. So then I used a bootable floppy containing HDtoolbox and the "smartfilesystem" in order to add SFS to the HDF.
4. Went through the normal process as you would on a real Amiga, except filling in some made up physical parameters to cover the 200MB, and placed the smartfilesystem on the HDF partition now labelled DH1: then saved.
5. Booted back into my normal Workbench on DH0: and finally formatted the DH1: HDF with SFS.

Questions:

Am I doing the above process correctly, or is there an easier method?

Is it necessary to use SFS for large HDFs in WinUAE? In other words is the standard FFS still a limiting factor? My guess is uaehf.device supports large partitions (>4GB), but the standard FFS doesn't. Obviously I know you can use directories, but this is a theoretical exercise.

What I don't understand is when you create a HDF file, you have the option of adding the SFS identifier instead of the standard DOS one. What's the point of this if you end up overwriting/entering the identifier anyway when you prepare the HDF like outlined above? Is it for use with a mountlist?

Would it be possible to create feature that produces an SFS HDF with a selected smartfilesystem automounted without going through the above process?

Thanks for any responses.

[Toni Wilen]

Am I doing the above process correctly?

No

Use RDB-mode if you want to use HDtoolbox (without RDB-mode hdtoolbox access is not available)

Only select filesystem identifier+non-RDB mode if you want to make "old-style" single-partition regular hardfile. In this case you ALWAYS need to use filesys-path if you use non-ROM filesystem. (=non-FFS)

[Bloodwych]

Thanks Toni - I feel so stupid. With hardly ever using anything other than standard FFS HDFs and PC directories I'd completely forgotten that you need to add the filesystem along with the identifier in the HDF properties requester.

Would it be possible to create feature that produces an SFS HDF with a selected smartfilesystem automounted without going through the above process?

So the answer is yes, there is an easy way of doing it and it was there all along.



The RDB mode helps a lot too for custom made HDFs with partitions.

Damn, that's a basic error on my part. The worst is I can remember you've told me this before.

Anyway, thanks for the shove in the right direction. I wish this thread would just go away now... (joking)