copying hard drive for 99 blitz (and then others)

runawayabc123

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Note: My source hard drives all work, I am doing this before any fail.

I am trying to copy my hard drive for 99 blitz. I got the image off of the existing hard drive, but putting it back on a "new" one isn't working. (It was used as a computer hard drive before.)

I am using the directions from here: http://www.revisionx.com/kiproject/chdman.html

The only difference I can note is that my hard drive does show up as initialized and some system partition on it. But no drive letter. Do I have to un-initialize it some how?

I have several other games I want to make backup hard drives for and blitz is my test one as I care about it the least. I think I will be making flash cards for them next, so tips for that too would be nice. (Which cf to ide adapters or compat flash card or other hardware suggestions would be nice!)

Thanks!
 
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Have you tried cloning the image using software like Ghost? I used Ghost 8 and made an exact image of my hard drive.
 
Do you have the jumper settings on the drive right? Note some drives have a "single" setting distinct from master, and master will work sometimes but cause issues later.

Anyone know offhand if Blitz 99 has some kind of drive model/serial check? I know for Killer Instinct you have to replace an EEPROM to use other drives, not sure if that's necessary here.
 
No, as I don't own ghost. It looks like it is up to version 15 or something like that. Anyone know if a newer one works too?

I was hoping for something easy like you have to reformat the hard drive like XXX to prep it since it was used for windows.
 
No, as I don't own ghost. It looks like it is up to version 15 or something like that. Anyone know if a newer one works too?

I was hoping for something easy like you have to reformat the hard drive like XXX to prep it since it was used for windows.

Burn a CD of PartedMagic and use ddrescue. Free, more featureful than Ghost, and it gracefully handles disk errors so it can (usually) get good images out of almost-dead hard drives.

Your source hard drive needs to successfully boot at least some of the time. If it's not booting period with the original drive, you're not going to pull a good image off it, period.

No backup solution will magically "fix" a drive that doesn't work because it's the wrong kind or it's hitting a serial check, though. To fix that kind of issue you need an appropriate drive or an "Any drive" mod.
 
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What might make this easier is just download the chd of the game from somewhere. I had similar issues doing this a few years ago. I gave up on the image from the original HD.

Once I downloaded the chd and using chdman, worked the 1st time.
 
Just as a follow up, all of my source hard drives work good. I am doing this BEFORE any fail.

My drive's setting is master. I'll try cable select.

I'll also look into PartedMagic.

Thanks for the tips so far!

And, maybe this will be a reminder to others to at least pull images of your hard drives and make sure the images work just in case! :)
 
any method todo a sector by sector copy should work.

so, either:
a) hardware duplicator
b) linux dd command
c) chdman
d) ghost
e) + many others
 
what size drive are you putting the image to?

60GB

Is that too big?

I switched to cable select and now it shows up and not initialized like the chdman demo.

But it still didn't work. :(

Unless that is too big, I'll have to try other software as suggested. I have a few old/smaller drives, but they are not in good shape. Most of my old "saved" drives are 60-80GB.
 
As I was trying to explain, many drives have a "Single" setting that's distinct from Master and Cable Select, and I'm pretty sure the drive has to be in Single for our games. What brand is the new drive?
 
Thanks for continuing to mention "single" setting.

I see:
Master
Slave
Cable Select
Forcing Dev 1 Present

Do you mean the last?

Hitachi Deskstar

Edit this one also has a 16 heads and 15 heads modes (it is in 16)

I also have
20GB Maxtor
40GB Maxtor
160GB Seagate
another 60GB hitachi (they are almost the same)

Only the hitachi drives have the "force dev 1 present" setting, none of the drives mention "single"
 
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I went digging to the bottom of my oldest of old computer parts and I am breaking out the 2GB drives. They were in bad shape, but I saved them for pack rat reasons. I have a few 6GB drives that are in better shape. I'll report back to let you guys know after some more testing.

I am running the hitachi in 32GB mode for one last shot.

I didn't think I would ever need hard drives from the mid 90s again. Yikes.
 
Hey, if you need some drives that are around 8 gigs I have a bunch. When I mod Xboxes I pull the original drives and most are in really good shape. They are 3.5 inch IDE drives made by Western Digital for the most part.

I'd sell one for $10 including Priority mail shipping or 4 for $30 shipped. All the ones I have are unlocked and ready to use.
 
All of my sub 10GB ide drives throw write errors. Sigh. Guess windows is way better at handling bad sectors.
 
All of my sub 10GB ide drives throw write errors. Sigh. Guess windows is way better at handling bad sectors.

I noticed something fishy... both 6GB hard drives throw errors at the same spot. 2GB, similar as well.

Do I have to do something to resize the images to match the drive I am writing too?
 
How big is your image?

If the error you get is "no space left on device" just ignore it and try the drive anyway. If you're getting something else, something's fishy.
 
How big is your image?

If the error you get is "no space left on device" just ignore it and try the drive anyway. If you're getting something else, something's fishy.

It is a write error, something about expecting another chunk. But, it is like chunk 2049 when the total was like 2046. The 40-60GB hard drive didn't have this problem. I didn't watch it close enough the first few times because it took 15-30minutes.

I tried carnevil and it wrote it to the hard drive, but carnevil was smaller. Blitz has like 1.5m chunks and carnevil was like 750K chunks.

But both chd files are like 1.5GB and compressed around 50%. So, I would think a 6GB would work. Blitz came from a 6.4GB hard drive. Carnevil from a drive around like 3.5GB. I haven't tested the carnevil. The Blitz board is going to be turned into carnevil and I wanted to do all of this "testing" on the blitz since I knew it worked and wouldn't feel bad is I mucked up the hard drive.
 
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