I think I’ve done something really stupid.

I already had a harddrive in my G5 with 3.15 installed on it. I’ve then physically installed my new SSD drive alongside the original HDD and then booted from CD to install 3.15 on the new unpartitioned drive.

However, in the process of doing this I appear to have affected the original drive. The computer still boots from it however only the files the third partition are visible. I presume I’ve altered the harddrive in some way but I don’t know how to correct it. Basically the first two partitions are there and they are showing as used but I can’t access or see the files.

It’s really weird everything is there I just can’t get to it. It’s definitely booting off the harddrive as the registration is coming up in my name on MorphOS.

Any help much appreciated.

Sounds like you've somehow overwritten the RDB of your original HDD, although being able to boot isn't usually an indicator. (Edit: Or maybe some Mac nonsense going on...)

What happens if you use Giggledisk (Aminet) to scan for partitions?

[ Edited by KennyR 08.03.2021 - 19:53 ]

Unplug the ssd drive and then check if you have access to the partitions

Quote:

I’ll try it, but what difference will that make?

Thinking about it the SSD and the HDD will possibly (I’m not at the computer) have the same names for two partitions could that be it?

[ Edited by Zetec-s 08.03.2021 - 21:43 ]

If you have the names of volumes of partition the same, you cannot easily access both from Ambient.
For example:
SSD partition dh0:, volume System:
HDD partition dh0x:, volume System:

from Ambient you access only one System: - probably that one you boot from.
Theoretically can be possible to mount second System under other volumename using mountlist. I not tested it.

In case if you have also the same device names:
SSD partition dh0:, volume System:
HDD partition dh0:, volume System:
I suppose you cannot see second disk.

The same names could cause the case. The best way is to rename both devices and volumes on old disk to something like dh0x: Systemx: ... to have easy access to your old files from Ambient.

First of all, what do you see in the HDConfig tool when you have both drives connected? Does that show all partitions on both disks?

If there are overlapping device names, others are automatically named as .1, .2 etc. So you should see dh0: and dh0.1: if you have two dh0: partitions. Check what you see in the shell with the Info command.

I don't think this is an RDB problem, but something probably get confused with the similar layouts on both disks, maybe even Ambient. Boot priority (seen in HDConfig) also affects from which drive the system boots. And if there's something pointing to volume names (like System: rather than SYS: (everything should always point to SYS: instead of hardcoded name for the system partition to avoid problems)) then it will look data from a wrong partition if you've booted from another.

If you see everything in the HDConfig tool, I'd just rename both device and volume names on the other disk to have individual names and try then. For example, dh1: to dhx: (where x is something that isn't used by other partitions) and System: to System2: (just rename the partition from Ambient).


Quote:
Then you would see that there isn't anything worse happened... if the original drive alone works just like before.

[ Edited by jPV 09.03.2021 - 10:47 ]

Thanks everybody for your help.

After Norbi's post, I realised that the drives on the SSD and HDD probably had the same names and indeed they did have.

So I renamed these and guess what it all works now.

Just now to work out the best way to get MorphOS 3.15 installed on the SSD and booting from that drive rather than the HDD, as obviously my first attempt didn't work. Preferably I would like to not have to keep on unplugging and plugging drives in and out.

If you want to keep both drives bootable, to have different setups/versions on both or to have a bootable backup, install the OS to the SSD so that there will be the small HFS partition on that too. I guess the standard MorphOS installation to a new drive will work if you can select the SSD there.. if you want to make absolutely sure nothing would happen to your old drive, it could be disconnected for the installation phase. Edit: it seems you already did this when I read the first post now ;)

Basically now you could just boot the Mac with the Alt/Option key pressed, and select your boot drive from there, but it will only affect where it loads the boot.img file, but the actual MorphOS system will be booted according the boot priorities set to the system partitions (it always loads the same system no matter which one you select). To override this we'll have to modify the bootinfo.txt file found on the boot partition (not the system partition, but the small HFS partition). If your System partition on the HDD is DH1: and the boot partition is DH0:, edit DH0:bootinfo.txt and add bd=dh1 at the end of the boot line. Do the same for the SSD, but replace dh1 in bd=dh1 to whatever your new system partition on the SSD is. Now the most important thing: always run "HFSSetMacBoot DH0:bootinfo.txt" command from the Shell after modifying the bootinfo.txt file or otherwise it won't boot and you'll have to fix it by booting from some other drive. And do the same for the file on your SSD. Now, you can just boot whichever system you want by selecting it from the Mac's boot menu (Alt/Option).

To change the default boot drive, you'll have to boot into the OpenFirmware prompt, and change an env variable there. I'm not sure how it goes with two separate disks, but maybe it goes like with multiple partitions and you can change the boot-command line. You can find instructions from there.

If that doesn't work, maybe you'll have to change the boot-device line to point to the exact drive...


[ Edited by jPV 09.03.2021 - 14:23 ]