Best way to clone HDD?

Hey friends, I'd like to do two things:

1. Setup a new HD with partitions using NGFS
2. Clone my existing, SFS based OS4.1FE partitions onto the NGFS drive
2.a. Stop using the SFS drive and repurpose it for something else

What would be the best way to go about this? Thanks!

@cloverskull

http://www.onyxsoft.se/backup.html

- Download the program
- Plug your new hdd in
- Prepare your new hdd
- Back up your old hdds to the new ones via the program
- Change the boot priority of your new hdds
- Turn off your system
- Remove your old hdds (or level them as not bootable)
- Reboot

Note: You still need a tiny FFS partition (hidden?) for boot.of...not sure which hatdware you use

Edit: Obviously it's an x5000 due to ngfs...you can probably skip the Boot.of part then, not sure

Awesome, thanks! This is exactly what I need. I'll experiment and see if I can boot with a single NGFS partition and follow up here in case other folks are curious.

@cloverskull

If the new drive is the same size, or at least you want to make the new partitions the same sizes as the existing ones, you can benefit from saving a template or profile from Media Toolbox (the menu in the Edit Partition/filesystem window). Then when you have entered the same window for the new drive, load the profile, and your partitions are set up. Then you only need to change their filesystem and maybe blocksizes, buffers etc.

I don't remember exactly which of the menu options work best for this, haven't done it in a decade or more. But try them out .

Best regards,

Niels

i just drag and drop the HD partition icon to a backup hd setup new harddrive..drag and drop back in. never had any issue with that, even this i even do with OS disk..

Awesome. Seems like I have a few options.

Also, I will need to update AmigaBoot to be able to boot from NGFS, so I'll hold off until I can get my hands on that. Appreciate the help, everyone :)

NB - I was considering trying this with a non-NGFS partition for boot but then decided I'd rather not cause unnecessary wear on my SSD, since I am completely and unnecessarily paranoid.

Recently I did many backups and then restores of Amiga, Apple Macintosh (68K and PPC) and PC hard drives (I have more than 100 HDDs already of various sizes, interfaces (IDE, SATA, SCSI, USB, ATAPI) and capacity.

The best utility for such task is dd (disk/data duplicator) on Linux operating system. dd on MacOS X (10.4 and 10.5) comes second. It is the best and easiest to use cloning software, since it preserves everything on the disk.

dd combined with gzip and sometimes split if needed to go for Flash drive, compresses the data in real time. It can ignore errors as well.

dd doesn't care about filesystem, partition table, etc.. It simply copies everything and I had case where I used the dd-ed image directly under QEmu without any issue.

Is there such utility like dd for Amiga?

You need to check that the backup program understands and respects AmigaOS links otherwise you may get into troubles especially regarding the shared objects from AmigaOS 4

@drHirudo
Quote:Which is a big problem...

Quote:Of course there are dd ports, and similar tools, but unless you are copying from/to identical disks it wont work for example for copying SFS partitions.
SFS's root blocks include the numbers of the first and last byte of the partition on the HD and if they don't match with the first/last byte of the (target) drive it wont mount the partition.

You get similar problems when dd'ing complete disks, the AmigaOS RDB includes the size of the disk. Copying to a smaller one is impossible anyway, on any OS, but on AmigaOS copying to a larger one will only use the size of the smaller source disk and you can't use the rest of the larger target. Unless you re-partition it, but that will delete all existing partitions...

@cloverskull

Before you go trough this "pain" of setting up a new hdd with NGFS.
Have you been in contact with Tony Wyatt and recieved a later version of NGFS than the official release?

I know he's been helping alot of X5000 owners to upgrade from the early version that was shipped with X5000 but i guess there must be someone left.

@smf

This is not trivial. Next to the new NGFS, you'll also need a new amigaboot. Otherwise you cannot boot amigaos on NGF/01

@geennaam
Quote:Even with an old amigaboot.(of|ub) or SLB_v2 you should be able to use newer versions of NGFS.
You'll have to use a FFS, SFS or NGF\0 boot partition with the kickstart files, incl. the new NGFS version, loaded by U-Boot/CFE/SmartFirmware via SLB_v2 or amigaboot, but you can use NGF\1 for the Workbench: and all other partitions only accessed by AmigaOS but not by the firmware/SLB.

@geennaam

To quote A-Eon - "Firmware updates for X5000 is supplied by your dealer".

My dealer GGS-Data in Sweden ordered one for me, got lost in the mail from A-Eon/Amigakit..

Thank Sun I have other dealers! ;)


@cloverskull
Yeah "Backup" is the one to use, it makes a copy with softlinks and all.

@smfQuote:

Yeah, me.

I've been too busy/cowardly to try. Plus, I tried to upgrade my uboot a few months ago, and the machine wouldn't even power on.

@joerg

So what you are saying is that you can create a small boot partition with only kernel and kickstart modules while everything else workbench is on a separate partition? This means that in theory you could also have kickstart and kernel modules on a separate partion on your SD card?

I would be very interested in a howto guide

In that last case I can get rid of my sata drive and go nvme only without having to deep dive into u-boot sources.

@geennaam
I am using this boot scheme a long time.

On Pegasos 2 I have:
- Internal IDE: CFCard, SFS/FFS partition with /Kickstart directory + amigaboot.of ( and also boot.img for MorphOS and kernels for linux )
- PCI SATA SSD - everything other, ie. SYS:, Work: ...

only I have to synchronize /Kickstart directories on CF and SYS: - it can be made by link or by copying of kickstart modules.

This is universal solution for all hw platforms, where firmware not supported boot from newer devices or filesystems, but operating system does. Pegasos cannot boot from PCI SATA.
I am using it also on AmigaOne XE / Micro, which can theoretically boot from PCI SATA, but sometimes it has isuues.

@geennaam additionally to what @sailor wrote:

If you are using a device/partition/filesystem which can be accessed by both the firmware and AmigaOS for the boot partition you may have to use BootDevice in the kicklayout.
For example if your nvme Workbench:/SYS: partition is "DH0:" create a text file "Kickstart/BootDevice" on the SD boot partition with the contents "DH0" and addto the kicklayout.
Without it, depending on firmware/bootloader, AmigaOS might try to use your small SD boot/kickstart partition as Workbench:/SYS: partition, instead of the one on the nvme.

@sailor @joerg

I am actually talking about the X5000 sdcard which contains uboot.

I've seen on the hyperion forum that you can add a partition table and create a fat or ext4 partition which contains a linux kernel. I was wondering if you could use such a partition for kernel + modules as well.

Then what would be the u-boot env variable to start amigaos

https://forum.hyperion-entertainment.com/viewtopic.php?t=3707

@geennaam
It should work the same way using an Amiga RDB instead of a MBR or GPT.
Unless you store an AmigaOS <= 3.x/m68k filesystem binary in it as well, or you are using more than 3 partitions, the RDB should be <= 4 KB.
When partitioning it with MediaToolBox, or similar AmigaOS tools, add a non-sense partition, for example using DOSType 0x01020304, reserving the space required for the U-Boot image (or simply 4 GB as that's IIRC the min. size of SD cards supported on the X5000) and use the rest of it for a FFS or SFS boot/kickstart partition.

Edit: There is a DOSType for unused/unsupported by AmigaOS space: "RESV", use that (0x52465156) instead of something like 0x01020304.

Edit2: Sorry, I don't know how to boot from the SD card, but if the X-5000 can boot a Linux kernel + initrd from it it can boot the AmigaOS amigaboot.ub + kernel/kickstart modules from it as well.