Hard disks

The Hard disks page contains settings related to the emulated machine’s fixed disks.

Hard disk list

All hard disks attached to the emulated system are listed, with the following information:

• Bus: storage bus the disk is attached to, as well as the disk’s bus channel or ID. These can be changed through the Bus and Channel/ID boxes below the list.

• File: path to the disk image file.

• C/H/S: disk size in cylinders, heads and sectors, respectively.

• MB: disk size in megabytes.

Speed profiles

The Speed box below the hard disk list controls the emulated speed profile for the selected disk. Speed emulation takes the rotation speed, physical layout and cache size of an average period-correct drive into account. The RAM Disk profile runs the drive as fast as the host can manage.

Note

Speed profiles are currently only available for IDE and ESDI hard disks. The RAM Disk profile is always used on other disk types.

Adding a new disk

The New… button opens a new window allowing you to create an existing hard disk image file.

• File name: where to save the disk image file. See Hard disk images for a list of supported image formats.

• Cylinders/Heads/Sectors: CHS parameters for the disk image. These boxes control the Size (MB) box below.

• Size (MB): the disk image’s size in MB. This box controls the Cylinders, Heads and Sectors boxes above. There are limits to how big a hard disk image can be; see Hard disk size limits for more information.

• Bus: storage bus to attach the disk to.

• Channel/ID: where to attach the disk on the selected storage bus.

  • On IDE disks, the first number corresponds to the IDE channel, and the second number corresponds to the Master/Slave position:

    Value	Channel	Device
    0:0	Primary	Master
    0:1	Primary	Slave
    1:0	Secondary	Master
    1:1	Secondary	Slave
    2:0	Tertiary	Master
    2:1	Tertiary	Slave
    3:0	Quaternary	Master
    3:1	Quaternary	Slave

  • On SCSI disks, the first number corresponds to the SCSI controller (starting at 0 instead of 1), and the second number is the SCSI ID within that controller:

    Value	Controller	SCSI ID
    0:00	Controller 1	0
    ⋮		⋮
    0:15		15
    1:00	Controller 2	0
    ⋮		⋮
    1:15		15
    2:00	Controller 3	0
    ⋮		⋮
    2:15		15
    3:00	Controller 4	0
    ⋮		⋮
    3:15		15

  • On MFM/RLL, XTA and ESDI disks, the second number is 0 for the first drive on the controller, and 1 for the second drive.

Note

If the disk is attached to a channel or controller that doesn’t exist, such as the tertiary IDE channel with no tertiary IDE controller present, it will be effectively disabled.

Press the OK button to create the disk image file, or Cancel to close the window.

Adding an existing disk

The Existing… button opens a similar window to the New… button, except that it lets you select an existing disk image file. The CHS parameters are guessed from the image’s file size, or the file header if the image is of a format which contains a header.

After selecting the image file and checking if the parameters are correct, select the Bus and Channel/ID for the hard disk and press OK to add it. Press Cancel to close the window.

Removing a disk

Select a disk on the list and press Remove to remove it.