Setting up an SD drive

[RuneRider]

I just received an SCSI2SD and have been trying to do more than simply install Workbench on it (which I've done). No matter how hard I look I've been unable to locate accurate information on how to go about creating a disk image file in Windows and writing it to the SD card. Everything seems to revolve around emulation and -for reasons I cannot fathom- writing to floppy disks.

I'd describe how frustrated I've become reading outdated and incorrect crap online for the last several hours but the language I'd use would get me banned.

Simple Question: Is this scenario actually possible?!? If so, please point me towards useful and detailed information on how to do it.

 

[dimfil]

Well, you are right up to a certain point...

On the other hand, in general, it is not a good idea to use image files for creating partitions on such media, eg sd cards, cf cards etc. You can find plenty of info on the internet about why this is not advisable. That's why you won't find a lot of guides on this.
Furthermore, nowadays it is so damn easy to create an emulated amiga on your pc/mac, install and create the perfect WB for your system and then just mount your media through a media reader and transfer all that.
For me, yes, it is better to stop looking how to create hard disk images for your amiga. Invest your time on learning how to manipulate those cards through winuae or fsuae and copy the contents of the emulated partitions directly to them.

 

[RuneRider]

Well, you are right up to a certain point...

On the other hand, in general, it is not a good idea to use image files for creating partitions on such media, eg sd cards, cf cards etc. You can find plenty of info on the internet about why this is not advisable. That's why you won't find a lot of guides on this.
Furthermore, nowadays it is so damn easy to create an emulated amiga on your pc/mac, install and create the perfect WB for your system and then just mount your media through a media reader and transfer all that.
For me, yes, it is better to stop looking how to create hard disk images for your amiga. Invest your time on learning how to manipulate those cards through winuae or fsuae and copy the contents of the emulated partitions directly to them.

I've already created an ADF of just what I want on my machine. If what you're saying is it's inadvisable to then write this to a card then why did you just tell be it's better to to do exactly that? I'm obviously misunderstanding. My setup is that I have the SCSI2SD board in my A3000 and have a media card reader/writer on my PC. I have WINUAE and maybe I've just missed the tool to put the data on my SD card.

Can you not point me in the direction of information to do what you suggest? Finding forum discussions that go off topic, 10+ year old posts on this subject and mostly just how to make floppy disks does nothing for me. Most of the people on this forum are likely using CF cards and I'm guessing the set-up is the same for an SD. Why then is it so difficult to find out the method to use them?

 

[supaduper]

Use winimage to create a image of your card, you can then write it back and or use it as a HDF in winuae, simple to use with a few clicks find it here :
http://www.winimage.com/winimage.htm

 

[dimfil]

I've already created an ADF of just what I want on my machine. If what you're saying is it's inadvisable to then write this to a card then why did you just tell be it's better to to do exactly that? I'm obviously misunderstanding. My setup is that I have the SCSI2SD board in my A3000 and have a media card reader/writer on my PC. I have WINUAE and maybe I've just missed the tool to put the data on my SD card.

Can you not point me in the direction of information to do what you suggest? Finding forum discussions that go off topic, 10+ year old posts on this subject and mostly just how to make floppy disks does nothing for me. Most of the people on this forum are likely using CF cards and I'm guessing the set-up is the same for an SD. Why then is it so difficult to find out the method to use them?

I never said anything about adfs. I just said it is inadvisable to write hard disk images to cf cards, sd cards, etc. Instead, you should prefer to copy items to the card using an emulated system.
What I am saying is that you can prepare an emulated system in winuae, install anything you need, then connect your sd card with an sd card adapter and add this card as a second hard disk in winuae. The next step is to just copy all items from your emulated system to this sd card.

This is an example of the process. It is cf card oriented but it is the same for any other media.

Use winimage to create a image of your card, you can then write it back and or use it as a HDF in winuae, simple to use with a few clicks :smile: find it here :
http://www.winimage.com/winimage.htm

It is advisable not to write images on such media. The data are manipulated in a completely different way than mechanical hard disks. There won't be any problem with data, but the "life" of the media itself is taken into risk...

 

[fgh]

You can write a HDF created in WinUAE to the card with winimage, as long as the HDF is created with 'RDB mode'.
If you create a HDF that is just lagre enough for its content, you reduce the wear issues mentioned above.
After writing the small image to the card, 'fixhddsize' from aminet will let you modify the RDB to use the full capacity of the SD card.
(It's common to just prepare the card in Winuae directly, instead of adding the extra initial step of the HDF)

 

[RuneRider]

Thanks for the advice. My issues were many: Errors in Winuae, Not recognizing the SD Card, Not writing to the SD card, reporting corrupt files Etc. After reading through the above posts and looking for ever more information online I came up with a procedure that worked for me.

This was oddly much more difficult than I had expected, however now that I've done it once I feel I can follow what I've come up with and do so for my other machines using the CF cards instead of SD. I'm guessing a combination of 64 bit Windows, brand and type of SD Card, reader type and other factors made this as difficult as it was. I've no doubt that the systems on the sites I found unusable are fine in other cases.

I'm just glad it finally worked.

Thanks again.