Advice on how to copy Falcon drive contents

[Steve]

Hi all,

This is a rather complicated issue I'm trying to solve, just seeing if anyone has any better ideas.

The problem:

I have a Badwolf auto byte swapping IDE adapter in my Falcon. ( viewtopic.php?f=29&t=6406 )The idea is: It automatically byte swaps the data, so the data can be kept in standard x86 format (little endian) But the caveat / challenge is: the drive needs to be partitioned with 'Windows compatible' enabled in HD-Driver.

Currently, I am using the adapter with my regular CF card which upon starting to use the BW adapter, I byte-swapped and re-written the data to the card. This works fine in the Falcon, but since the partition is still what it was originally, it isn't 'windows compatible' as of yet.

So the challenge is: I need to create a brand new CF card image from scratch, this time with 'windows compatible' enabled. It will require the same partition layout as my original drive image. I then need to work out a way to replicate all my data.

What I am thinking is the solution: I use Hatari. I mount both my old CF card image and my new CF card image (with windows compatibility enabled) simultaneously. I then use a tool like Kobold to transfer old C: to new C: and vice versa.

Or: I do a kind of intermediary way, where I copy the data into folders on a Gemdos partition. Then copy from the folders on the Gemdos partition over to the new compatible image.

One thing I am a little worried about: Since I use EasyMint there is an ext2 partition which really makes things a bit more complicated. The only thing I can think of doing here is going into Mint inside Hatari and making a TAR file of the ext2 partition. Then extracting the TAR to the new drive.

If anyone has any better ideas I'm all ears... because it's basically an entire days work I'd rather not be doing! haha. It'd be nice if there was a way to modify my original drive image in a hex editor or something, to enable the windows compatibility. That'd save a lot of effort. But I don't know anything about that and I'm probably just dreaming.

Any ideas welcome!