HstWB Imager Features - henrikstengaard/hstwb-installer GitHub Wiki

HstWB Installer Imager comes with following features:

  • List physical drives (*).
  • Display information about physical drive or image file (*).
  • Read physical drive to image file (*).
  • Write image file to physical drive (*).
  • Convert image file between .img/.hdf and .vhd.
  • Create blank .img/.hdf and .vhd image file.
  • Optimize image file.

(*) parts of or entire feature requires elevated/administrative rights.

Supported operating systems

HstWB Installer Imager supports following operating systems:

  • Windows
  • macOS
  • Linux

Amiga rigid disk block support

HstWB Installer Imager supports Amiga rigid disk block by reading first 16 blocks (512 bytes * 16) from source physical drive or image file. When creating an image file from a physical drive, HstWB Installer Imager uses Amiga rigid disk block to define the size of the image file to create. E.g. if a 120GB SSD contains a 16GB Amiga rigid disk block, HstWB Installer Imager will only read the 16GB used and not the entire 120GB.

Img file format

Img file format is a raw dumps of hard disks, SSD, CF- and MicroSD-cards and consists of a sector-by-sector binary copy of the source.

Creating an .img image file from a 64GB CF-card using HstWB Installer Imager will require 64GB of free disk space on the specified destination path.

Vhd file format

Vhd file format is a virtual hard disk drive with fixed and dynamic sizes.

Fixed sized vhd file pre-allocates the requested size when created same way as .img file format.

Dynamic sized vhd file only allocates storage to store actual data. Unused or zero filled parts of vhd file are not allocated resulting in smaller image files compared to img image files.

Creating a dynamic sized vhd image file from a 64GB CF-card using HstWB Installer Imager will only require free disk space on the specified destination path matching disk space used on source physical drive.

Amiga emulators with vhd support

Following Amiga emulators support .vhd image files:

FS-UAE might require following custom option to force RDB mode by manually changing FS-UAE configuration file (replace 0 with other hard drive number if needed):

hard_drive_0_type = rdb