Copy harddisk to hdf

Hello everyone i'm new here and for what i've read i've found very interesting this group...

I'm a newbie of the amiga scene and i'd like to receive help (if possible) for my problem.
I've an Amiga 1200 with harddisk with 2 partitions and from when i discovered winUAE i'd like to perfectly copy/clone my harddisk with workbench and the installed games/programs into an hdf file (but since i've partitions i think i'll have to do 2 hdfs) so i can keep using my 1200 on my notebook... Is it possible? How can i do that? (i'm a newbie and i'd like a step to step guide of commands or tools to use) I've already connected the real HD to my pc and used it with winUAE but i don't know how to "clone" it to an hdf file.


And (if i'm not asking too much) in case of future changes made with winuae on the hdf, i'd like to "update" the real harddisk.. Like doing a sort of "synchronization" between the hdf and the real harddisk.. is it possible this too?


Thanks for reading (and answering i hope)

[thomas]

i'd like to perfectly copy/clone my harddisk with workbench and the installed games/programs into an hdf

Run WinUAE, go to Hard Drives, click on Add Harddrive, select your Amiga HDD and click on Create Hard Disk Image File. You need only one. Since version 0.8.22 WinUAE can handle multiple partitions in one HDF.

And (if i'm not asking too much) in case of future changes made with winuae on the hdf, i'd like to "update" the real harddisk.. Like doing a sort of "synchronization" between the hdf and the real harddisk.. is it possible this too?

Well, not easily. You could write back the image file to your Amiga HDD but then all changes you made to the HDD with your A1200 are lost.

You should rather consider to connect the two computers via network and share drives.

First of all, thank you very much for your fast answer

Originally Posted by thomas

Run WinUAE, go to Hard Drives, click on Add Harddrive, select your Amiga HDD and click on Create Hard Disk Image File. You need only one. Since version 0.8.22 WinUAE can handle multiple partitions in one HDF.

Ok i've just finished to do that and worked well... i wasn't able to do it earlier cause i was running winUAE 1.1.0 which hadn't that button
now i got version 1.3.3 and everything went good

Originally Posted by thomas

Well, not easily. You could write back the image file to your Amiga HDD but then all changes you made to the HDD with your A1200 are lost.

Could you gently explain me the reverse process? how can i put a working hdf on a real amiga hd?

Thanks again

Originally Posted by thomas

Well, not easily. You could write back the image file to your Amiga HDD but then all changes you made to the HDD with your A1200 are lost.

Obviously i didn't mean a real "synchronization" like in a PocketPc/Palm system, i'm just happy if i can copy my real hd into an hdf file (like i just did thanks to you) so since i'm often out for work i can use my A1200 on my laptop and when i come home after a week for example i wish i could overwrite the whole hd of my A1200 with the hdf, "updating" it this way with all changes done during that week, and so go on...

so if you or someone else could also help me in this last part it'd be really great... thanks a lot!

[thomas]

I am not very familiar with Windows. There probably are Windows programs which can create and write back image files of HDDs. The only advice *I* can give is an Amiga solution:

Connect your Amiga HDD to the PC as before, then run WinUAE and load your preferred configuration. Add the Windows partition where the HDF resides on as a hard disk directory and add your Amiga HDD as third HDD. Now start the emulation and use an imaging program like TSGUI to write the HDF to your Amiga HDD. In order to write the partitioned HDF to your Amiga HDD with TSGUI, select one partition from the Amiga HDD and then select "Full HDD image".

If the HDF is protected from reading, because it is locked by WinUAE, then you have to create a copy of it before you start the emulation.

TSGUI is available from Aminet: http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/tsgui

Thanks a lot you were very helpful i'll try it soon...

however if someonelse has others solution i'm listening