Beginners FAQ:Hardware Support (Rev #6, changes)

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Q: Which file systems does RISC OS support
A: RISC OS supports FAT16 and FAT32 as well as its own (FileCore) file system.

Q: How do I remove my thumb drive safely?
A: Click MENU (middle mouse button) on the drive icon and select ‘Dismount’. If the drive was FAT32 you will notice that its name changes from ‘FAT32_0’ to ‘:0’. Now it is safe to unplug it.

Q: How can I format my thumb drive, so that RISC OS is able to read it from within RISC OS?
A: RISC OS currently only formats drives with its own (FileCore) format. If you plan exchanging data you should go for FAT32 on Windows/Linux/MacOS. To use the RISC OS file system see: using HForm.

Q: I have a spare USB hard disk. How do I use this on the RISC OS box?
A: You an use it with FAT32 or the RISC OS native file system (FileCore). See using HForm.

Q: Can I boot the system from the attached hard disk?
A: Sure! More details to come soon.

Q: How can I enlarge the RISC OS SD card image to use the full SD card?
A: Currently you cannot enlarge the SD card image to use more than 2GB. To use the remaining free space you could create a FAT32 partition and use this instead. SeeSystemDisc is part of the DiscTools suite, and is a general-purpose tool for managing the system software on modern RISC OS systems. SystemDisc allows you, easily and quickly, to initialise new SD cards for booting your RISC OS system, entirely from within RISC OS. It creates a two-partition SD card which can use all of the available space on your SD card. See this forum thread for a solution that adds a third FAT32fs partition on the original 2G SD card image where there is still free space on the SD card.

Q: Can I have an icon on my iconbar for my Fat32 filesystem?
A: Use ‘AddTinyDir’ to add an icon to your iconbar. Something like this should do the trick:

fat32fs:mount -p2 :16 { > null: }
addtinydir Fat32fs::fat32_16.$

Assuming that your fat32fs module is loaded in predesk (which is the default place to put it) you can pop the above commands in an obey file and either run it manually, or add it to the boot sequence to add the folder to your iconbar.

Q: Can I cache filesystems in RAM?
A1: Yes. !Memphis is a RAM based file system that auto-sizes to provide a cache for commonly used files. An option is available to automatically cache the !Scrap directories, which can lead to an improvement in performance for applications like !NetSurf which make a lot of use of this area.
A2: RISC OS provides RAMFS, which can be controlled from the !Configure utility.