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Partition Manager 0.82 (debug build)

Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2022 1:19 pm
by JonAbbott
A drive Partition Manager for all Acorn / ROOL versions of RISC OS.

Changes in this build
  • Experimental ST506 support (untested)
  • Generic IDEFS support
  • Detection of HCCS, ICS, and Risc Developments IDE Podules
  • HCCS full disc FileCore support (detection only), currently no partitioning support
  • ICS partition support (detection/initialise)
  • Risc Developments full disc FileCore support (detection/initialise)
  • ZIDEFS partition support (detection only)
  • Window text switched to Outline fonts to ensure they're scaled correctly
  • Loading progress indicator added
Features
  • Supports RISCOS 3.x onward, with no external dependencies
  • Supports MBR partition tables (Pi)
  • Supports full disc partitioned drives without an MBR partition table
  • Supports partitioning of SCSIFS, SDFS, ADFS hosted drives
  • Format/Initialisation of partitions as FileCore or FAT16/32
  • Supports GPT partition tables
Possible future features
  • Creation of the Primary FAT32 partition for Pi’s
  • Support mapping DOS partitions to DOSDisc files in a FileCore filesystem
  • Initialisation of the Pi FAT32 partition with the latest and/or last stable Pi firmware/RISC OS ROM
  • FileCore partition expansion
  • Support FileCore old and new maps
  • Allow partitions to be reordered
  • Backup/Restore the partition table
  • Option to Initialise a Pi FileCore partition with the current HardDisk4 image
Possible future FileSystem support
  • IDEFS devices hosted on the following Podules:
    • APDL
    • Alsystems PowerTec IDE minipodule
    • SimTec
    • Watford IDE
  • ADFS drives via Wizzo Module
Goals
  • Provide a visual representation of disks and their partitions
  • Provide a simple interface to create and format partitions
  • Allow the FileCore partition on the stock Pi image to be easily extended to fill the disk
  • Replace HForm on RISC OS 3.x onward
In Scope
  • RISC OS 3.x, RISC OS 5.x
  • ADFS, SCSIFS, SDFS, CDFS, IDEFS, ZIDEFS hosted drives
Out of Scope
  • Adding partition support to the OS
  • PartMan (R-Comp partitioning Module)
Mock-up
Image

Current Build
Work in progress build. Notes:
  • Supports ADFS, IDEFS, ZIDEFS, SDFS, SCSIFS and CDFS hosted drives
  • Full FileCore drive, MBR and GPT partitions are supported
  • Does not currently work out a FileCore partition size correctly if it's embedded in an MBR or GPT partition and not using the full partition
  • Does not recognise FAT partitions embedded in a full disk FileCore drive, that have no accompanying MBR/GPT partition entry
  • Currently makes no attempt to check if a FAT partition entry is embedded within a full disk FileCore drive and has an accompanying DOSFS file (ie Pi !Boot.Loader)
  • CDFS does not currently support audio tracks and assumes the whole disc is data
  • You can't resize the window contents
  • The app icon is temporary
  • Supports FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 and FileCore formats
  • Does not calculate the free space in FAT12 or FAT16 partitions
  • Freespace on FAT32 may not be accurate as it shows the freespace as reported in the FAT header; it does not trawl the FAT itself to get the exact current freespace
  • GPT Basic partition contents are not checked for NTFS/FAT formats etc
  • Debug output is written to !PartMgr.debug/txt (if DEBUG%=TRUE in !RunImage)
  • If a disc error occurs whilst reading a partition, it will be marked in red
  • It currently relies on FileCore partitions being mounted to display volume information
  • Does not detect drive insertion/removal
  • Writing partitions has currently only been tested on SCSIFS hosted drives. I have not tested SDFS or ADFS although they are implemented
  • ST506 drive size detection may not work
  • ICS's implementation of IDEFS has many hardware and IDEFS variants. Support for ICS is going to be hit/miss
  • I've yet to reverse engineer HCCS's partitioning, its work-in-progress
  • Risc Developments' IDEFS does not appear to support partitioning, only full disc FileCore initialising is supported
  • I do not have any IDEFS/ZIDEFS/Whizzo based hardware to test. If you have suitable hardware and spare drives to test with, please provide feedback
NOTE: This software is used at your own risk and is provided for test purposes only. Do not use when drives that contain valuable data are attached to the system

NOTE: Debug output to !PartMgr.DEBUG/TXT is enabled by default in this build
Please provide feedback / debug reports in the feedback thread