I'm on my way to upgrading the old hard drive in my Macmini. The previous thread I started was deleted, so I thought I would write again and update.

I took some advice and formatted a thumb drive with SFS and started copying over my system drive to it. It works for a bit but eventually an error occurs suggesting the drive has failed (I haven't noted the exact error). This is an on-going issue with USB drives: Copying a small number of files or megabytes will work fine, but copying too much and it chokes.

I'd like to get my system backed up before installing the SSD. Any suggestions to make USB more reliable?

I would do the similar upgrade for a macmini and for pegasos2, I have ide to cf adapters and cf cards waiting for this step.
On pegasos2 I have on same hard disk also a linux (debian) disto, I'd like to backup the whole hd (not singles partitions), swap disks and restore.
What's simplest method to do this? Is there a particular backup program for MOS or I can use OS commands to do this?

@Travis_H

What method did you use to copy your files?

Did you drag icons in Ambient or did you use a shell/terminal window?

This problem is known and often reportet. It exists since Posidon-stack exists. It does'nt affect all type of sticks - only with slutty firmware-implantation (which are the most of the cheap ones). Makes no difference between useing Ambient or shell.

To avoid such problems you may split your Sys: to pieces of about 250-300MB and copy them to your stick.

Attention: Do not remove or start next action after Anbient or shell shows copying finished! The buffer is'nt written at this time. Wait about 15 sec. If you don't do that, at next copy action you get errors and nothing can be written. In this case put stick into an PC and delete or write something on it - this repairs it in most cases.

USB-HDs, CF or SD (with Adapter) does'nt show that behaviour.

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I tried drag and drop as well as COPY.

There is a tutorial about MIRRORCOPY that I followed to get the USB stick formatted to SFS, but the command listed for MIRRORCOPY failed.

It's been a long time since I used shell commands and I made a few mistakes at the beginning, but I was surprised when 'copy ALL FROM System: TO MOS_Backup: CLONE' didn't do what I thought; instead, it created a folder in the location I was -- RAM: -- and copied there, until the ram: drive filled and everything crashed!

Perhaps I'll try a couple different sticks of better quality (Sandisk?), or go the piecemeal way.

Another question: What are the essential folders to copy over to a fresh install to make the system, more or less, like it was before? I'm talking Ambient settings, System settings and my MorphOS keyfile.

BTW, I installed 3.16, so my system is up to date.

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Weird.. maybe a typo somewhere, a missing space or so?

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Yeah, some sticks don't seem to be that reliable, especially with large amounts of small files. Maybe adding buffers for the partition on the stick could help then? Writes would go on bigger chunks then... something like 4096 or so (you can change that with HDConfig or by the AddBuffers shell command).

I have some reliable sticks for backup use and haven't had problems with them, but I always keep the USB prefs window open when doing important copy operations on USB to see if there are fails like nak timeouts. And also double check the result with MirrorCheck to be sure I get a 1:1 copy.

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So I partitioned and formatted an older USB hard drive for the backup purpose and it worked just fine with the drag and drop method.

Thanks for pointing this out.

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All relevant user-settings are located in System:Prefs (NOT System:MorphOS/prefs!!!). You only need to copy that dir back and you get *exact* your old System. For instance System:Prefs/env-arc is one of the most importent dirs.


A new MOS-Installation consists only of dir System:MorphOS and the propper boot.img. Only these you need to update.
All other dirs contains user-progs, which may be updated to newer versions, to be found on MOS-CD (Apps, Utilities, Tools,....).
Do *not* chance anything in System:MorphOS, if you don't know exactly what you are doing!

[ Editiert durch Amigaharry2 03.04.2022 - 21:36 ]

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This is the command I used (directly from the tutorial, changing only the source and destination):

MirrorCopy ALL CNT NOHARD FROM Work: TO Mos_Backup_2:Work

The result is: ERROR: wrong number of arguments

If I removed the 'CNT NOHARD' it starts to to work, then immediately returns:

Scanning subdirectory '.recycled'... ERROR: object is in use

Not sure if I can just delete the .recycled directory.

Anyway, I dragged and dropped my Sys: partition to an SFS formatted USB hard drive and it seemed to work fine! I'm getting ready to do the actual upgrade to the Macmini and try to re-install MorphOS from the Live CD, then copy back my partition.

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I think you have an old version of MirrorCopy installed. If you downloaded it from Aminet, it's an ancient 68k version. I guess the one in MorphOS Storage should work better, but that's not the latest either.

Try with the version 2.5 from here.

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No, don't delete it. I don't know why it tries to copy it as it basically should be hidden... try with the newer MirrorCopy or skip copying it.

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Yeah, I guess it should be pretty much exact copy like that too, but if you'd had softlinks, then it would have failed. MirrorCopy would handle them correctly.

Not to take the thread in a whole different direction, but I attempted the SSD install yesterday with no luck.

I watched two tutorials and was fairly confident in my abilities. The Macmini came apart pretty easily and I was extra careful when accessing the old hard drive. But when I booted it up after re-assembly -- while holding Option Key -- it only got as far as the Mac boot menu with no volumes to boot from. I had inserted the MorphOS live CD at initial boot, but it never showed up. The CD drive spun up and back down.

My fallback plan was to re-install the old (but working) hard drive and live to try another day, but even after that, the computer fails to boot.

Now I have a borked Macmini G4 with a MorphOS live CD stuck in the drive and no clue what to do next.

I hope someone here has some good ideas to point me in the right direction.

Start by resetting PRAM (cmd+alt+p+r). If that helps, reinstall the SSD and boot from USB instead of CD.

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Is there a tutorial on making a bootable USB Morphos stick?

Try ...MorphOS Library - Booting via USB

Then there's the ...

The Official MorphOS USB Boot & Installation / Update Guide

Hope those help you as much as you need.

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BTW. did you try to insert the CD on MorphOS with the old drive before you did anything else? That you are sure it's burned OK and working with the optical drive on that machine?

And about the stuck CD, if you still can access the Startup Manager menu (alt/option key), you can try to eject the CD there by pressing Eject (Mac kb) or F12 (PC kb) to eject it. Or another option is to boot with the left mouse button pressed and Mac should spit out the CD on boot then.

I think that I've had occasions where OF didn't recognize the CD, but it helped if I inserted it while booted into OS, let it spin up and get detected properly, and then reboot and go to the Alt-menu. Or eject the CD in the menu and re-insert it...

Optical drives are getting old on these machines and may start acting weirdly... or stop reading CD or DVD discs, but still work for the other. I think it's better to use USB sticks for booting nowadays...

UPDATE:

Thanks for all the feedback and suggestions so far. Alas, I still don't have it back to normal, but I'm making progress.

1. The Live CD was the same one used just a couple days prior to update the original HD to 3.16 (so my backup would be the most up-to-date), so I'm pretty sure the disc is readable and working.

2. I followed another tutorial online and was able to get the CD out by disassembling the drive. It's really pretty easy. None of the other methods described in this thread or online would eject the disc.

2a. I tried inserting the disc during the early boot screen with no success. Indeed, the disc is stuck in the drive again. I'll retrieve it when I tear it apart again.

3. Following the instructions above, I was able to create a USB stick with MorphOS and was able to boot the Macmini from USB on the third try! Unfortunately, the system didn't recognize the SSD, so I wasn't able to complete the installation. Did I damage the IDE interface (daughter board) during the original SSD install? Might explain why the CD drive is unresponsive.

4. What command would I issue in OF to see if the CD drive is recognized and available. Is there an eject command?

All help has been much appreciated!

Hi

you can try this page https://library.morph.zone/Open_Firmware

For listing aliases you can use: " dev /aliases .properties " without quotes and there you can see devices too.
For CD-Drive should be alias cd, then you can list content of CD using by this command: " dir cd:,\ "
For Eject try " eject cd "
Maybe help you this.

[ Edited by Falcon_11 09.04.2022 - 00:52 ]

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Both of these commands instantly freeze the machine, requiring a reboot into OF to do anything else. Is this a clue?

When I last disassembled the machine to take out the CD, I did inspect my work around the pin connectors, etc and I don't think I did any damage... I think it's odd both the CD drive and hard drive are not responding.

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This might indicate that both drives respond to the same drive select. Are you sure both drives are properly configured ?

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I initially only swapped out the original hard drive with the new SSD, so I don't think I messed with any configurations. I did later take it apart again to retrieve the CD and looked closely for bent pins or loose connections. Everything looked good.

On Mini's IDE you have to jumper both devices proper to Master/Slave or CableSelect (CS). Do you know what is set to your new SSD for default? If CS, *both* devices must be set to CS. Is this the case at your SSD and DVD?
Additional some devices won't work propper with CS! In that case you *must* set Master to your SSD and Slave to DVD-Drive.

It is very strange that both devices do not occour in OF, if devices are set propper. It is also possible, that your SSD isn't fully compatible to Mini's IDE and prevent both devices to work - you should test it with your old HD.
Had same problem on a PB: SSD + DVD won't work........HD + DVD - no problem!


[ Editiert durch Amigaharry2 09.04.2022 - 21:07 ]

> It is also possible, that your SSD isn't fully compatible to Mini's IDE

Of course it's fully incompatible, as it's an mSATA one after all ;-) If there's an incompatibility, it's either between the SSD and the adapter or between the adapter and the PATA controller.

Of course I mean the adapter (otherwise connection would'nt even fit physicaly......).

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I bought the adapter from the link in the video of a working SSD upgrade. The link for the mSATA drive was broken, so I chose a reputable brand and went with it (Transcend). To test, I purchased another mSATA SSD from another brand I've never heard of. I'll tear into the Macmini this week and try again.