Discussion:
WinUAE Add DIrectory space problem
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s***@gmail.com
2006-05-30 10:17:00 UTC
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Hi All,


Using WinUAE1.2, I have added a directory on Windows as a PC drive
(DH0:). It is detected fine and I begin to install WB on it. But soon
it says the drive is out of space. Why is this? It has only used 3MB of

real space on the WIndows folder, but WB wihtin Winuae says it is 80%
full....Also says it is using up 4070MB.


Do I need to do something else when using a Windows direcory as a hard
drive? Does WinUAE limit the size of the drive when using Windows
folders? How can I make WinUAE understand the actual used size of the
drive correctly?


(Using Hard file works fine)...


Thanks for your help....
Simon
2006-05-30 19:26:12 UTC
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Hi,
Post by s***@gmail.com
Using WinUAE1.2, I have added a directory on Windows as a PC drive
[...]

I don't think you'll find many specialists to help you on this
newsgroup, as, basically:
- comp.sys.amiga.games is not about UAE or Windows
- many still play with a real Amiga
- the posts are mostly about games, not emulators

Of course someone may jump in and solve your problem, but I think you'll
have more luck by posting to emulation newsgroups.

Cheers,
Simon
Nathan
2006-05-31 03:09:48 UTC
Permalink
Post by Simon
Of course someone may jump in and solve your problem, but I think you'll
have more luck by posting to emulation newsgroups.
You know, I think I have the answer.. and I'm pretty sure it's not
even emulation specific. The real problem here is that hard-drives
these days are so so much bigger than in the "Amiga days" that the
amount of free space reported is probably a bigger number than the
program knows how to handle (the one reporting the free space.) It's
checking to see if you have enough space to do something, and getting
some massive number back, and depending on the actual result of the
(overflowed) number it gets, it's quite likely to get a number that's
interpreted as a *negative* value. So any 'nice' program that checks
for free space before copying files ends up behaving badly. :|

Basically, what this person should really do is make the main
hard-drive an image-file. (Just a nice little 40MB or whatever
hard-drive image .. the exact size you want will depend a lot on what
you're doing .. I have lots of images: a 17MB PAL Workbench, a 50MB
Picasso96 Workbench, a 400MB Games partition, and a 220MB 'other stuff'
partition.) Image files end up having a whole lot less problems than
windows directories. (I also have a windows directory as my scratch:
drive.. and Directory Opus is always reporting (falsly) that there
might not be enough space to copy the files into it. Fortunately with
DOpus I can just get it to copy anyway. Other program aren't always so
flexible.)

If you really really wanna be working with just a Windows directory,
install the Workbench onto a normal disk-image file, then copy that to
a Windows directory. Just don't be suprised if you find there are
problems down the line again with disk-space or file-names. The
Windows directory tricks UAE does are pretty good, but still not
perfect.
(sometimes windows-illegal filenames get mangled, and expect the free
space to always be reported wrongly ..most people don't use windows
directories as drives, so these problems might never be fixed.)

My recommendation is still an image file though. The Amiga Operating
System is pretty simple. If you run out of space on an image you can
just make a new, larger image and copy the files over to that. So long
as you have a good file-manager like DiskMaster or DirectoryOpus,
nothing will ever get screwed up when copying files to a new image. (I
like FileMaster too, but recently noticed that it can't handle zero
block files, and I have a few of those on my drives.)

Okay, that's all I have to suggest. Good luck with it.

Nathan.

PS: Actually, I even remember having this with some 'old' Amiga
programs on the A4000 with a nice huge 4GB HDD. Some of the free-space
values would always show up with some crazy negative value. A sure
sign the programmer never considered such huge numbers would be
encountered.
s***@gmail.com
2006-06-01 09:15:34 UTC
Permalink
Hi Nathan,

Ah I think you are right....I thought it was a bug with WinUAE (I was
surprised because something like this would have been ironed out ages
ago)....but what you mention is probably the problem...Guess I'll have
to stick with images then...

Thanks v much!!!
Nathan
2006-06-01 11:50:54 UTC
Permalink
Post by s***@gmail.com
Ah I think you are right....I thought it was a bug with WinUAE (I was
surprised because something like this would have been ironed out ages
ago)....but what you mention is probably the problem...Guess I'll have
to stick with images then...
When I think about this one I think it would be nice if there were an
option to force UAE to report a small amount of disk-space free..
Like, never report more than 20MB free, and then show real values once
it gets below that. Hmmm... I wonder if there's a way for me to
suggest that. I'd like to keep Directory Opus's "there might not be
enough disk space" active, but it's starting to get annoying.

Well, I should have another play with setting up my emulated Amiga here
.. I've finally got E-UAE going on the Mac, and it's pretty cool. Not
quite as cool as WinUAE, but still it's nice.. I'll play around with
WinUAE on the PC later.

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