Copying files from an HPFS HDD

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi.

I need to help someone to copy some files from an OS/2 HPFS HDD  (possible IDE) of an old machine, and mount that HDD on a different machine. What do you suggest?

This person is using Linux, suggestion with this OS is welcome, but other techniques are welcome too.

I was thinking that possible he can do a full  image of the HDD, maybe with some IDE to USB adapter, and install OS/2 on a Virtualbox and mount as secondary drive the image. But I don't know any software that can create a compatible virtual HDD that can work with Virtualbox.

Suggestions are welcome.

Regards

[Dave Yeo]

Use a dist like Ubuntu or Mint (only ones I have experience with) that ships with the HPFS module, others may also include it but lots don't, though it can probably be installed on most. Plug the USB/IDE drive in, click the partition to mount it (might be automatic) and drag and drop or otherwise copy the files seems the simplest. Even better if his computer has an IDE interface.
EAs will be lost, which shouldn't matter for data.
The Linux HPFS support is pretty good, it'll even handle our libc symlinks and permissions if @UNIXROOT for example was on a HPFS partition and will copy EAs to another HPFS partition though it can't actually use the EAs.
Linux handles our JFS pretty good too, but it does get confused by the lack of permissions and you need to be root or use sudo. I noticed that Mint even mounts my OS/2 JFS as case insensitive now to avoid the problem of having FOO and foo on an OS/2 partition.

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi Dave, thanks for the info.

Do you know if all newer Ubuntu and Mint versions ships with HPFS support by default, or you need to download it or enable it ?

Regards

[Dave Yeo]

I have the version before the newest of Mint and it shipped with HPFS support, same with the last Ubuntu I used, which has been a couple of years.
I think that all Debian based dists still ship with HPFS support but not sure.

[ivan]

Hi Martin,

I updated my Linux box to the latest version of Mint and am still able to read all my OS/2 partitions, HPFS and JFS, over the network without problems.

[Dave Yeo]

Hi Martin,

I updated my Linux box to the latest version of Mint and am still able to read all my OS/2 partitions, HPFS and JFS, over the network without problems.

Reading over the network doesn't mean much as the client takes care of accessing its files.

[Dave Yeo]

I made a DVD from Mint 19.1, which seems to be the latest. Booting it as a live CD, I can read all my partitions fine, HPFS, JFS, Fat32. The live CD seems to leave the user with privileges to read the JFS volumes unlike a regular install, unless Mint itself has changed how it handles OS/2 JFS.