Partition Manager 1.02

Format/Partition hard discs on all versions of RISC OS
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JonAbbott
Posts: 3034
Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2013 12:13 pm
Location: Essex
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Partition Manager 1.02

Post by JonAbbott »

A drive partitioning tool and FileCore/FAT formatter for all Acorn / ROOL versions of RISC OS.

Available below as an attachment for non-networked/pre RiscPC machines, or via PackMan using the source URL detailed at the bottom of this post.

Features
  • Supports RISC OS 3.x onward, with no external dependencies
  • Supports full-disc unpartitioned FileCore drives, GPT and MBR partition tables and MBR partition tables with an overlayed FileCore drive (Pi)
  • Supports drives hosted on the following filesystems:
    • ADFS / ADFS4
    • ATAFS
    • HDFFS
    • IDEFS
    • MassFS
    • SCSIFS
    • SDFS
    • ZIDEFS
  • Supports initialising a Pi Boot drive, with selection of either the last stable or latest version of HD4 contents, Pi Firmware and RISC OS version
  • Initialisation of partitions as FileCore or FAT16/32
  • Supports 512n, 512e and 4Kn drives (provided the underlying filesystem supports them)
  • Supports the following IDEFS Podules under 26-bit RISC OS versions:
    • APDL
    • Beebug
    • HCCS
    • Risc Developments
    • Simtec
    • Watford IDE
  • ST506 initialization (untested)
  • RISC iX partitions (read-only)
Image

Changes since 1.01
  • SCSIFS will now fall back to scanning every LUN if REPORT LUNs returns zero
  • Pi Boot drive now adds Hook files into all RO5*Hook folders
  • Fixed a potential buffer overrun when extracting ZIP contents
  • Fixed a buffer overflow caused when a bad CD is mounted under CDFS
  • Modified Hook files to support SCSI or SDFS as the Pi boot device
  • Resolved an issue where Pi Boot files were being created in the wrong folders (bug introduced with the change above)
  • When formatting a FileCore E layout, it wasn't warning if the requested volume size is >= the FileCore limit (512MB - 1 LBA)
  • Added Hardware specific settings to the debug output for FileCore volumes
  • Added additional FileCore layouts when formatting a volume on a FileCore partitioned drive, to allow the drive to be moved to ADFS (allows RISC OS 3.x drives to be formatted under RISC OS 5)
  • RISC iX partitions will now be retained when reformatting a FileCore volume that is hosting RISC iX
  • Now shows an uninitialized RISC iX area if a drive has been partitioned with SCSIDM but hasn't had RISC iX installed yet
  • Active RISC iX Unix partitions are now determined by their length
  • ST506 drives were not being detected correctly
  • DiscOp reads were failing on ST506 drives because an alternative DiscRec was not being used
  • Fixed an issue that was causing ST506 Boot records to be read incorrectly
  • ST506 geometry is now worked out by testing the heads first, followed by the sectors per track and finally the disc size
  • Formatting a volume as FileCore now sets the hardware specific parameters required for ADFS to work. These are only overridden if the partitioning scheme is Simtec or HCCS
  • Three FileCore format layouts are now available: E. E, Risc PC. E+
  • When formatting a partition as FileCore, the partition size is now checked to be within the size supported by both the host system and the limits of the chosen layout. If the size exceeds either, it will prompt to reduce to the maximum size supported.
  • Reduced the list of available FileCore Allocation unit sizes to 3 values
  • The Allocation unit size list is now updated whenever the format or layout are changed
  • FAT12/16 now support more than 1 reserved sector
  • Replaced all information dialogues related to download errors with retry dialogues
  • Added checks for disconnects after every attempt to download from a stream
  • Added keep alive's during downloads when no data is received within one sec
  • Now scrapes the ROOL and NetSurf websites to retrieve the available versions of RISC OS, HardDisc4 and NerSurf
  • Unwanted directories were not being skipped when extracting streamed ZIP's
  • FileCore size limit check now accounts for the start LBA. ie a partition that starts 64GB into the disc will be restricted to 192GB
  • Corrected FileCore version check for idlen 21 support to 3.75
  • New FileCore partitions are now capped within the current FileCore limit
  • IDE Op's are now used for all IDE drives hosted under ADFS
  • If a connect to a URL failed when trying to extract a streamed ZIP file, it was reporting a ZIP contents error, instead of reporting it failed to connect
  • Now downloads the relevant package lists to obtain the URLs for the Pi Boot packages
  • Corrected FileCore version check for idlen 19 support to 3.16
  • Removed unsupported layouts on FileCore versions below 2.91 (RO 3.60)
  • ADFS drives now track the Controller type they're hosted on
  • When identifying FileCore it wasn't using the LBA size to read the defect list, which generated an error with 4Kn drives
  • Resolved an issue with DNS on the initial Internet config on Pi Boot Drives
Extending
Partition Manager is modular in design, allowing additional filesystem support to be added without altering the main program. Refer to the documentation below for details on internal variables, procedures and functions required to add filesystems, partitions and formats.
EXTENDING.zip
(9.37 KiB) Downloaded 731 times

NOTE: This software is used at your own risk and is provided on a best endeavours basis. Always ensure a backup is taken before modifying partitions on existing drives

NOTE: On networked RISC OS 3.5+ machines, use the PackMan distribution to receive automatic updates. Add the following URL to the PackMan sources:

Code: Select all

https://www.jaspp.org.uk/packages/release

Please provide feedback / debug reports in the feedback thread. Debug output can be written to !PartMgr.debug/txt by holding ALT when launching
Attachments
partmgr102lite.zip
Lite version for RO3.x machines
(174.69 KiB) Downloaded 667 times
partmgr102.zip
(518.53 KiB) Downloaded 703 times
User avatar
IanJeffray
Posts: 163
Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2021 1:51 pm

Re: Partition Manager 1.02

Post by IanJeffray »

E, Risc PC=4GB
I don't think this is accurate. RISC OS 3.6 and 3.7 can support up to 128GB.
JonAbbott
Posts: 3034
Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2013 12:13 pm
Location: Essex
Contact:

Re: Partition Manager 1.02

Post by JonAbbott »

IanJeffray wrote: Thu Dec 14, 2023 5:51 pm
E, Risc PC=4GB
I don't think this is accurate. RISC OS 3.6 and 3.7 can support up to 128GB.
I've removed that text above as there's about half a dozen checks performed that limit the maximum size, including Filecore version, Drive size, LBA size, SWI the Filesystems supports and LBA addressing mode supported by the drive. The maximum size will vary from machine to machine.
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