Removing OS9 Drivers?

[eyoungren]

I've always wondered if there is a way to remove these after formatting a drive with them.

What are the benefits (if any) of removing them and does that have any negative impact?

Is it possible to do without reformatting the drive?

 

[Project Alice]

I've always wondered if there is a way to remove these after formatting a drive with them.

What are the benefits (if any) of removing them and does that have any negative impact?

Is it possible to do without reformatting the drive?

I'm not aware of it being possible without a reformat. The only negative impact is that the drive will no longer be recognized by classic Mac OS. I think the drivers are a small partition at the beginning of the drive, similar to how MBR works, or how GPT has the annoying 200MB EFI partition.

 

[weckart]

I've always wondered if there is a way to remove these after formatting a drive with them.

What are the benefits (if any) of removing them and does that have any negative impact?

Is it possible to do without reformatting the drive?

I think iPartition can add them without reformatting, post install. They are a wrapper around the partition from what I remember. I would need to dig out my copy (wherever it is) and see. Presumably they could be removed but I'm not sure what the benefit of that would be; they take up no space and I don't think they affect read/write speed in any tangible way.

In any case, iPartition becomes freeware after 1st July and is worth downloading then just for being able to resize/add/delete APM volumes on the fly.

 

[LightBulbFun]

I think iPartition can add them without reformatting, post install. They are a wrapper around the partition from what I remember. I would need to dig out my copy (wherever it is) and see. Presumably they could be removed but I'm not sure what the benefit of that would be; they take up no space and I don't think they affect read/write speed in any tangible way.

In any case, iPartition becomes freeware after 1st July and is worth downloading then just for being able to resize/add/delete APM volumes on the fly.

oh thats pretty cool, i knew there where ways to resize/non destructively partition a volume with OS 9 drivers via linux

but did not know there was a way to do so within OS X

will definitely have to give it a try at some point

 

[reukiodo]

You can remove the partitions with diskutil from the command line, and as long as the boot partition isn't on the drive, you should be able to move and resize the remaining partitions also.

 

[DearthnVader]

I don't think there is a non destructive way to remove OS 9 drivers from a disk, best to just clone the partitions you want to keep to a disc that has a Apple Partition Map without the OS 9 drivers.

 

[weckart]

Just tried with a demo version of iPartition on my DA. There is a menu option to add/remove a HFS wrapper. This is the non-destructive addition or removal of the OS9 driver. As long as the partition is no larger than 256GB, a wrapper can be added.

 

[LightBulbFun]

Just tried with a demo version of iPartition on my DA. There is a menu option to add/remove a HFS wrapper. This is the non-destructive addition or removal of the OS9 driver. As long as the partition is no larger than 256GB, a wrapper can be added.

View attachment 832074

interesting, are you sure thats OS 9 drivers?

Xpostfacto likes to complain about the lack of a HFS wrapper, on partitions that where formatted in OS X, even ones where the entire drive does have OS 9 drivers

 

[weckart]

interesting, are you sure thats OS 9 drivers?

Xpostfacto likes to complain about the lack of a HFS wrapper, on partitions that where formatted in OS X, even ones where the entire drive does have OS 9 drivers

I thought the wrapper included the OS9 drivers. Now I'm not so sure. I will have to somehow find my copy and grab a disk and play around and see what it does.

 

[weckart]

interesting, are you sure thats OS 9 drivers?

Xpostfacto likes to complain about the lack of a HFS wrapper, on partitions that where formatted in OS X, even ones where the entire drive does have OS 9 drivers

I found this, which suggested to me that the wrapper made the HFS+ volume bootable with MacOS

https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/mac-os-x/0596009437/re163.html

Scroll down and look for the -w switch for adding a HFS wrapper.

 

[weckart]

I managed to find a DVD I burnt a while back and grabbed a FW drive I had lying around. I partitioned the drive under Leopard and made sure I left the OS9 driver checkbox unticked.

I booted up Tiger and launched Classic. OS9 doesn't like the TV I am using as a monitor on my DA and freezes just before the Desktop launches. Fine under OSX otherwise.

I installed OS9 on the FW drive using a retail OS 9.2.1 disc under Classic. It didn't complain about the lack of hard disk drivers. I made sure the checkbox to update the hard disk drivers remained unticked. After installation, I reboot and go to the OS selecter screen in OF. OS9 does not show as expected.

I fire up iPartition and add the HFS wrapper




After this was done, I look at the partition map



Seems ok but I see nothing about the drivers so I check the Get Info about the drive



I notice that the file flag for bootable remains unticked, so I tick it and notice it adds a task for iPartion to complete



After this is done, I restart and notice the drive still does not show in the OS selector screen in OF. I boot up Tiger and check Startdisk in System Preferences and the drive shows up. So I select it and restart.



And it boots. And freezes just at the Desktop launch stage. But it seems as if iPartion can make a non-bootable drive bootable, even if it isn't 100% OF compliant.