Better way to format a CF card and a way to back-up

[Twosocks]

Formatting a CF goes pretty fast on a EIII, however next the EIII does a verify. This takes aprox 2,5 hours. If something goes wrong, it mostly goes wrong during this verify process. I've noticed that even a card that was succesfully formatted on the EIII before, might very well fail in another attempt.

So, what I did was make an image of the card once it was succesfully formatted. The software I used for this can be found here: http://www.roadkil.net/program.php?ProgramID=24

The program is called "Roadkil's Sector Editor".

It's not for MAC, but there must be similar software available.

I made an image of my card, after format and with one bank and the OS written on it.
Since this image has the OS on it, it also has the calibration settings for my own EIII on it. In order to have a universal image, that anyone can use, it should not have the OS and system data on it.
Once you have installed the card, after putting the image on it, you should transfer the OS  from your EIII (floppy).

How to put the OS on your CF:

Master: Sub module 7: Disk utillites Submodule 4: Copy Software.

For those interested: I have an image available. If someone can give me a location to make it available I'll put it online.

I can send it via email too, since it's a small file after compressing it with WinRar.

If any of you need a guideline on how to use the software, please let me know and I'll provide it.

Regards,

Peter Kersten.






 

[ditabeardmemo]

Hi Peter:

This is a great solution! I have a server where I can host the image and make it available to everyone. PM me and we'll get it posted.

Best,
Brandt

[Twosocks]

Hi Peter:

This is a great solution! I have a server where I can host the image and make it available to everyone. PM me and we'll get it posted.

Best,
Brandt

Thanks Brandt. 

I already found a solution for hosting. At the moment I'm writing some instructions.
As soon as I'm ready, I'll let it know.

Regards,

Peter Kersten.

[esynthesist]

Sounds interesting.

In fact, I added a similar feature to EMXP some time ago, which allows for two different approaches:
1/ Create an image of an existing EIII-formatted flash card (or harddisk or zipdisk or...) and save this image to other flash cards (or other media in general) via the "restore" function. EMXP also allows to add or remove soundbanks from these images before writing them back to a card.
2/ Generate a blank EIII image from scratch, which then can be written to any media for use in the EIII (no OS is on the image)
What EMXP does not support however is *formatting* these flash disks for use in the EIII, because I didn't technically succeed in achieving this so far.

That's why I'm quite interested in the RoadKil approach that you propose.

So I have tested this approach today but unfortunately I encounter the same problems. Perhaps you used another method, but here's what I did:
(note: I performed the tests with my Emax-II because my EIII is not hooked up in my studio)

Here's what I did:
1/ Format a 512 MB CF card on my Emax-II and put some banks on it
2/ Save all data ("sectors") on this card to an image file with RoadKil Sector Editor. This file contains 984816 sectors of 512 bytes each.
3/ Write this image file back to another brand new 512 MB CF card with RoadKil Sector Editor. This CF card was never formatted by any Emu sampler before.
--> The write process of RoadKil failed after having written 976640 sectors. It couldn't write the remaining part of the original image file
--> I tried this CF card anyway on my Emax-II but the Emax responds with a "Not Emax-2 Disk" error.

Of course the approach works fine and is 100 pct successful if I write the image to a CF card which has been formatted by the Emax-II itself before (e.g. writing it back to the CF card from which the image originates). But this requires that the card must go through the slow formatting/verification process on the EIII and Emax-II anyway, and this is exactly what we try to avoid.

I did the test only with an Emax-II ; I might try it with my EIII too, but I remember from the past that I had the same problems with Emax-II and EIII during the development of EMXP.


Did you actually succeed in writing an image to a brand new card which had never been formatted by the EIII before ? And this card was actually accepted by and usable on the EIII ?
That would be interesting. Then I probably did something wrong.
(perhaps writing a 512MB image file to a larger card, like a 1GB one, could be a solution. I'll try that too...)

///E-Synthesist
 

[Twosocks]

I only had problems with one card out of four, however indeed a format on the EIII solved the problem. The format on the EIII only takes a few minutes, you can skip the time consuming verify! The card won't work when you stop during verify, that's why you write the image to it. It would be nice if the format on the EIII could be skipped, however I can live with it since it's only a matter of minutes.

For those interested,
I got my hands on some original Kingston Standard 1GB (With flower label) CF cards. I may be selling some, formatted, one bank on it and tested.

I'll be doing some more testing when I get the Kingston Standard cards and try to figure out if they need a format on the EIII first too.

Regards,

Peter.

[esynthesist]

Aha OK.

So the "trick" here is to cancel the verify process immediately after the formatting has completed and verification has started; I assume you do this simply by turning the machine OFF ?
And then we write an image to that disk on a PC, in order to make it actually usable on the EIII.

Allright - good hint !

///E-Synthesist

[Twosocks]

Yes, simply turn off power as soon as verify starts.

You could try this also: before writing the image to the card, format it with FAT (Or FAT 32). It works here.
Make sure you have "current" set at "0000000000" in Roadkil's Sector Editor.

Regards,

Peter.

[who]

Would someone be willing to describe the steps to create an image using Roadkil's Sector Editor?  It seems like it should be pretty straight forward, but I can't get it do really do anything.