!HForm errors

I’m trying to format an SD card to create a larger 32GB disc using HForm for use with SystemDisc but I keep getting the below error. I can ignore the error but HForm either fails or sometime it asks me to insert my original RISC OS SD card I booted from -Which I assume would format my main card so haven’t done.

Steps I’m using are:

*Create RAM Disc
*Cop SystemDisc and HForm to the RAM Disc
*Remove the SD card I booted the Pi from
*Insert SD Card I wish to format
*Launch SystemDisc, select SDFS and select disc 0
*The follow error pops up Disc error at 08 : 0/00000000
*Launch HForm and accept defaults
*It will start to format the SD card but either errors and stops or sometimes it has asked mo to insert the RISCOSPi SD Card at which point I power the Pi off and try again.

Is there an easier way to produce a 32GB card?

Yes.

If the card you are trying to format gives a disc error then throw it away immediately. It is scrap.

I would format it first using HForm then try SystemDisc.

Otherwise you seem to be doing the right thing.

A bit more info may be helpful.

What version of Pi, what version of OS5 and make of card?

Can Partition Manager init a disc?

Thanks for the replies. A few more details then, It’s a Pi 1B+, RISC OS 5.28, and the SD card is Sandisk Ultra 32GB. I have been able to format the SD card on a Mac without issue and write a new Raspberry pi image using the Raspberry image tool so the card itself seems to be working still.

Good to know the steps I’m following are correct though. I can hunt around and see if I have any other cards to try too.

It’s a Pi 1B+, RISC OS 5.28, and the SD card is Sandisk Ultra 32GB.

There is a possible issue with RPi3’s, current OS5.29 builds and fast SD cards, most of which is not applicable here.

The procedure above worked OK in my RPi1, but it was with OS5.26 and a 32GB SanDisk Extreme micro SD in an adaptor.

or sometimes it has asked mo to insert the RISCOSPi SD Card

This sounds like the behaviour when it needs to access resources from !System. You might need to copy that to RAM as well before starting.

or sometimes it has asked mo to insert the RISCOSPi SD Card

CPUClock was responsible for that here, it was trying to write its statistics to a card that was now two inches too far away. Either quit the app or disable statistics in Choices.

This procedure will only work if you have clean booted RISC OS to ensure no applications are running which try to access the boot disc (SD card) after it has been removed, or you will see disc errors.

Either boot with shift held down, or press escape rapidly during boot to bypass anything loaded by !Boot. Once at the desktop create the RAM disc, then open !Boot.Resources with shift held down, copy !System to the RAM disc and double click on it. This /should/ give you a setup with no applications running, but capable of running most other tools (such as HForm and DiscKnight).

CPUClock was responsible for that here, it was trying to write its statistics to a card that was now two inches too far away. Either quit the app or disable statistics in Choices.

I am not sure how to trap this. I vaugely remember a discussion years ago about thismessage in another context (not CPUClock), and I think the ‘insert disc’ message is issued by the file system and is not trappable as many other errors are.

As David says – disable statistics. I will check to make sure the front end does not try to write anything to disc when stats are disabled.

Ok I will give it another go with the above additions.

Making real progress now :)

I have a bootable 32GB SD card and it says 30GB free within RISC OS so that all looks good. Now the problem is the resolution is stuck to something like 640*480 and also if I plug my USB stick in it says it can’t be read. I’ve used the HardDisc4 from the ROOL downloads page but can I just copy over the HardDrive4 contents from a previous working SD card? If I do will that bring back all of my old settings so I that I can change the screen resolution etc?

If the card you are trying to format gives a disc error then throw it away immediately. It is scrap.

Before that, try a format and verify on another machine. Not all cards are equal and done just don’t want to work in the Pi.

Several years ago, one that the Pi didn’t like I stuck in the dashcam. It’s only now starting to write blank files, and I’m not sure it’s not a bug with the dashcam itself (which is a piece of crap, really).

To put it into context, between my two cars I’ve done neatly 30Kkm, and my top speed is ~48 km/h. The camera dumps 300-400MB/minute. I’ll let you work out how much abuse the SD card has endured.

So only toss it if it worked and now doesn’t. Otherwise, it may not be the card.

then open !Boot.Resources with shift held down, copy !System to the RAM disc

Pretty much the only thing that might be wanted is CLib. The one in ROM should be new enough.

I recently rebuilt my SD card. HForm is BASIC, and SystemDisc was happy with the ROM library. So no System was required.

But, yes, spam the Esc key at boot or else loads of stuff you don’t want will be loaded.

create the RAM disc

This bears repeating always. The HForm UI is not good. I was asked whether I wanted to format SCSI or SDFS (S/M). Well, which is which?

So I copied HForm to RAM disc and removed the USB key. Now no chance of screwing up the wrong thing.

I’ve used the HardDisc4 from the ROOL downloads page but can I just copy over the HardDrive4 contents from a previous working SD card?

Yes/No.

Yes, if you boot bypassing the boot stuff you can pretty much copy across stuff that was working before.

BUT, and it’s a very big BUT, you will need to do this manually and in parts in order to DO NOT TOUCH LOADER within Boot.

$.!Boot.Loader is magic, that allows a bootable FAT partition to exist within a FileCore disc. Any changes made to the file (such as overwriting it) will break the magic and soon stuff will go wrong in unpleasant ways.

One for Nemo – Is it possible for a numbered mode say 1024 x768 16M to be included in RO for use on startup without a running !Boot?

Would be better if I started again and copy my old HardDisc4 contents during the SystemDisc step? Can I then copy everything including the Loader folder or would still be bad thing to do?

Thanks for additional context Rick.

but can I just copy over the HardDrive4 contents from a previous working SD card? If I do will that bring back all of my old settings so I that I can change the screen resolution etc?

That should work. It is all a lot easier to create the new card in an external USB card reader then all of the existing source, both the Loader Pi firmware and RISC OS stuff, can be copied directly with SystemDisc.

if I plug my USB stick in it says it can’t be read.

Is it a Fat32 job, the module for that would be present in the original installation.

Can I then copy everything including the Loader folder or would still be bad thing to do?

In Loader copy the lot. The CMOS will as currently set rather than the default, and config/text and cmdline/txt could have user edits.

Copying HD4 is also the thing to do.

The result should exactly the same content as before but on a bigger card.

…..ok I’m trying again and will feedback how it goes. Last time it was close so hopefully this time it will all work.

yes this would be easier with an SD Card reader. My monitor has a card reader and built in but RISC OS doesn’t seem to like that and I think I discarded my only card reader years ago as at the time every computer seemed to come with card readers built in! But in hindsight I should have kept it.

Can Partition Manager init a disc?

Yes. Menu over the drive icon and select Initialise.

I believe the OP wants an MBR partitioned disc with the PiBoot FAT partition and a full-disc FileCore overlayed, which is something I’ve been working on over the past few weeks – it’s not ready for testing yet.

My monitor has a card reader and built in but RISC OS doesn’t seem to like that

That is a bit of a bind, RISC OS is not always compatible with modernity. I bought my card reader long ago and it works perfectly.

An alternative method would be to copy the whole of the SD card to a SCSI formatted USB pen and then persuade the Pi to boot from that with :-

*Configure FileSystem SCSI
*Configure SCSIFSDrive 0

That saves the getting things together on a RAM disc first stage, everything that is wanted is to hand on the pen.

The configured FileSystem will need to be put back to SDFS afterwards.

Right I have a working 32GB SD card :) Thanks for the help everyone.

Steps I used in the end:

*Download latest RISC OS Pi 2GB image from ROOL
*Write this to a 32GB card from macOS using BalenaEtcher
*Boot Pi from this SD card
*Copy SystemDisc, HForm, and !System to RAM DISC
*Copy the contents of the SD card hard drive to a USB stick
*Launch HForm and format SD card
*Copy contents from the old Boot Loader directory to the SystemDisc directory as prompted
*Copy entire contents of the hard drive into the Boot directory as prompted. Note here I did get some warnings about the Loader directory but deleting and clicking fix from SystemDisc seemed to work
*Reboot the Pi and it worked :)

Would it be possible to have various SDFS disk images for standard sizes of SD card that can be copied to them using other OSs? If their content was all zeros (or all ones) apart from the filesystem data, they’d all compress down to a similar, managable, size.

It is easy to make an img file of an SD card. Create the card first then use dd. With a rather empty RISC OS 16GB card on a Mac :-

dd bs=4m if=/dev/rdisk8 of=pi.img  status=progress

The 15.5GB img file zipped down to 36MB, the original RISC OS image was 90MB.

To complete the round trip the image was written to a 32GB card with balenaEtcher which on RISC OS showed 15GB as the card size.

It is easy to make an img file of an SD card. Create the card first then use dd.

Exactly, but I think the image size provided by ROOL is 2GB (I didn’t check recently). It would be nice to be able to choose 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128GB, etc. versions which wouldn’t be hard to produce, but very useful for users with more recent £5 sd cards. Until there’s a program to expand the file system to the whole disk automatically, at least.

would be nice to be able to choose 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128GB

I can help out here. If I create an SD image with just the FAT partition and have it auto-load a tailored Partition Manager, it can prompt if you want the full drive as FileCore or want to manually specify a size. It can then download/extract the HD4 image and update the firmware in the FAT partition.

And if It fails to get an IP via DHCP, just leave you with the FAT partition and full-disk FileCore partition for you to sort out yourself.