THIS TUTORIAL IS NOW IN THE LIBRARY
http://wiki.morphos-user.com/index.php/MorphOS_External_USB_Drive_Backup_Guide

This version will no longer be updated. Please see the library version for updates.

MorphOS External USB Drive Backup Guide

Starting Out:
First things first, you need an external drive. 500GB to 1TB drives are now very inexpensive, so go out and buy one.

You will nedd to format the drive in filesystem format that MorphOS understands. I ecommend FAT32 as I have been told that external drives formatted as MorphOS SFS can cause serious problems.

If you are using WindowsXP to format the drive, you will need a large capacity formatting tool as the built in tools will not allow you to format a large drive with patitions larger than 4GB.

A good tool is guiformat.exe available at:
http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?guiformat.htm

You can, of course, also use MorphOS to format the drive, but this is not something I will cover in this tutorial.

A solution to the Fat32 Problem:
Fat32 cannot store Amiga file protection bits. A solution to this problem is to create an SFS Disk Image on the the Fat32 partition. Here is how to do it.

You firstly need to create a disk image file. You can do this quite easily with Kryptos, however, you will need to memorize/write down a password, and this may become unwieldly. We will use Kryptos to create an image, but not use it's encryption feature. This is the only way I know of to create an image file.

1. Open SYS:Applications/Kryptos
2. Select a Unit and click on Create New...
3. Save your image file somewhere on the Fat32 drive you formatted earlier by clicking on the file gadget. Give it an appropriate name, click ok, and click on Next.
4. Make the volume an appropriate size. You can make it large enough for one backup, or large enough for several. You may want to consider making it 3800MB so it will safely fit on a DVD.
5. The crypto options don't matter. Click next.
6. Enter any password. We won't be using it anyway, so it doesn't matter what it is. Click next.
7. The filesystem page doesn't matter. Click Next.
8. Wiggle the mouse, click Create.
9. Wait while the image is created. It could take quite a while depending on its size. Click OK.
10. Back in the Kryptos main window, click Eject to eject your newly created image.
11. Quit Kryptos.

Making The Disk Image Usabe as a Regular Disk

1. Open SYS:Tools/FileImageCtrl
2. Click a unit to highlight it, then click Insert...
3. Select the disk image you created earlier, and click OK.
4. Make sure Read/Write is selected in the window.
5. Close FileImageCtrl
6. Open SYS:Tools/HDConfig
7. Under FILE IMAGE you should see your disk. It will likely appear as a red disk icon. Click to the right of its icon.
8. Select One partition from the selection window, unless you wan't more, but you're on your own if you go that route.
9. Click to the right of the image drive icon again. This time you will have to give the partition a name. Call it IMAGE0 or whatever you want. Just make sure it isn't named the same as other partitions! Click OK.
10. Click Save... under the drive image icon.
11. Close HDConfig
12. Open SYS:Tools/Mounter
13. Select fileimage.device from the top pane
14. Highlight IMAGE0 (or whatever you named your image) in the bottom pane.
15. Select MorphOS SFS from the FileSystem: gadget.
16. Click Mount, or Mount on Boot if you want the image to always be mounted when you insert the image using SYS:Tools/FileImageCtrl
17. Close Mounter
18. On your desktop (Ambient) select Utilities->Format Disk from the main menu (right click menu)
19. Select IMAGE0 (or whatever you named your image), give it a label, and click Quick Format... You may uncheck any of the options.
20. Close the format window.
21. Your new disk image will show up on the desktop, or in My MorhpOS

Making Your Backup
You may now copy clone your drive to the image.

1. Open a new shell (Action-N from ambient).
2. Input the following command line commands. Press entere at the end of each line.

sys:
copy clone all #? IMAGE0:

3. Wait for the copy to finish.
4. Repeat for each drive you want to backup.

CONGRATULATIONS! You now have perfect backups of your MorphOS drives!

To Restore:

1. Open SYS:Tools/FileImageCtrl
2. Select a Unit
3. Click Insert...
4. Select your backup image
5. Close FileImageCtrl
6. Open SYS:Tools/Mounter
7. Select fileimage.device from the top pane
8. Highlight IMAGE0 (or whatever you named your image) in the bottom pane.
9. Select MorphOS SFS from the FileSystem: gadget.
16. Click Mount, or Mount on Boot if you want the image to always be mounted when you start MorphOS
17. Close Mounter
18. You may now copy all or some of the files from IMAGE0: to wherever you want.


[ Edited by Jason on 2010/5/4 3:29 ]

[ Edited by Jason on 2010/5/4 3:30 ]LibraryLibrary

[ Edited by Jason on 2010/5/4 16:25 ]

[ Edited by Jason on 2010/5/4 16:26 ]

Great tutorial. Yes, backups on Amiga like operating systems are just that easy. BUt I'd format the drive in an AmigaDOS filesystem, if I were going to use it just for this. Loosing specific AmigaDOS attributes (such as protection bits and filenotes) is a pity.

@jcmarcos
Did you miss the bit about formatting the image disk with SFS?

Not sure if using SFS is actually a problem if you remember to unmount the drive before disconnecting it.

@ Golem

Indeed, formatting the drive with Fat doesn't help if you have a file partition in SFS inside. Anyway, using Kryptos for the whole disk and formatting it with SFS works just fine.

@ Jason,

if you would like to import your tutorial into the MorphOS Library, click on the Library link at the top of this website and send a quick email to the listed address expressing your interest.

You should keep in mind that a filedisk on a FAT partition is limited to 4GB in size, as thats the file length limit of FAT32.

So its not possible to backup more than 4GB of data, so EXT2 may be a better choise in ths case..

Geit


[ Edited by geit on 2010/5/4 18:31 ]

Quote:

Yes, I saw that, and wondered why not formatting the entire mass storage device in an AmigaDOS filesystem. An SFS-formatted disk-image file on an FAT partition should work, but it has its drawbacks (the 4GB limit, for instance).

Quote:
Mkay... but dos attributes should be safe.

SFS formatted USB drive has worked fine here for the backups. I have made several SFS partitions to USB media to be equivalent to my HD setup. Basically I can run the system from the USB media fully or partly too.

Normal "copy" command is good to make one backup, but for easier maintaining I'd recommend something else. I'm currently using BackUp for it. It can delete files from the destination which are no longer present in source, it doesn't copy files which are already present and not modified, handles softlinks, etc.

I have this kind of little shell script to launch it:

if exists MorphOS2USB:
RequestChoice >env:rcnum "Backup" "Backup Mac mini to USB" "Make" "Test" "Cancel"
if 0 eq $rcnum
quit
endif
if 1 eq $rcnum
utils:DiskTools/BackUp/BackUp SOURCE System: TARGET MorphOS2USB: BACKUP CLEAN FORCEDELETE DONTCLRSTAT AUTOQUIT
utils:DiskTools/BackUp/BackUp SOURCE Utils: TARGET UtilsUSB: BACKUP CLEAN FORCEDELETE DONTCLRSTAT AUTOQUIT
endif
if 2 eq $rcnum
utils:DiskTools/BackUp/BackUp SOURCE System: TARGET MorphOS2USB: BACKUP CLEAN FORCEDELETE DONTCLRSTAT TESTMODE
utils:DiskTools/BackUp/BackUp SOURCE Utils: TARGET UtilsUSB: BACKUP CLEAN FORCEDELETE DONTCLRSTAT TESTMODE
endif
else
RequestChoice Backup "Correct USB media not found." OK
endif

Quote:

Thankyou for making this clear, I was starting to think that I was growing senile, as if AmigaDOS formatting an USB storage was impossible somehow.

Quote:

Excellent choice, and excellent usage example. That "backup" command from Onyxsoft's Daniel Westerberg does everything it has tod do.
I can see people on other computers paying money for such a solution. Mainly becuase someone has made them believe that backups are complicated things that require bloated applications to get done.

The funnily named "robocopy" command for Windows can do these kind of things.
This simplicity is inherent to amigan systems. Also, we benefit from applications not normally locking the files, which makes them copyable. Other systems make backups very complicated because of file locking. In MorphOS, I can freely replace or delete the file for a system component that is currently running.

Quote:

Yeah, I don't know what's the problem mentioned. Maybe if somebody forgets SFS partition size limits (128GB per partition, you should be able to make several of them on bigger drives)? Anyway, I'm making backups from A1200, Peg and mini to USB nowadays :) 4-8GB USB memory sticks are fine for "everyday" backuping of files which need protection bits preserved and then bigger FAT HD:s for other more general stuff.

[ Edited by jPV on 2010/5/6 19:17 ]

Quote:

Dude, if someone has a hundred gigabytes of things worth backing up, then there's something wrong somewhere!

Quote:

:)