Supported Hardware/Emulators
- All Ataris, Milan, Hades, Suska-III board, MiST and MiSTeryNano. Other Atari compatible platforms may also work. Test the compatibility with the demo version.
- Atari SH/Megafile, ACSI, SCSI, IDE, ATAPI and SATA drives, removable media drives (SyQuest, ZIP, JAZ, PD, MOD, SuperDisk/LS-120, ...), memory cards, SSDs, DOMs, USB drives with third-party modules or SCSI2Pi. Formatting Atari's SH drives is not supported.
- Drives and memory cards up to a capacity of 1 EiB (Exbibyte). SCSI drives with a capacity > 1 GiB connected to the ACSI bus require a suitable host adapter to use their full capacity, e.g. an adapter by Inventronik, an ICD Link or a LINK96/97. (TOS, MagiC or MiNT can only use the first 2 TiB. Software using the SCSI Driver and supporting 64 bit sector numbers can access sectors beyond the 2 TiB limit.)
- The GigaFile SD card drive (ACSI and SCSI) by Inventronik and the UltraSatan SD card drive (ACSI) by Lotharek.
- The RaSCSI/PiSCSI board for the Raspberry Pi.
- 8 devices on the SCSI bus (TT or Falcon are also a SCSI device) and 8 devices on the ACSI bus.
- 8 sub-units (LUNs) per SCSI/ACSI device. With TT and Falcon SCSI the SCSI Driver supports 32 LUNs, e.g. with SCSI2Pi.
- Up to 8 IDE/SATA/ATAPI devices (4 IDE ports): 2 with the Falcon, the MonSTer board or the Thunder IDE interface for the TT, 4 with the Milan, 4 with the CTPCI board (not officially supported), 8 with suitable third-party IDE hardware.
- Drives/media with physical sector sizes of 512, 1024, 2048 and 4096 bytes.
- SATA Advanced Format Drives (AFD), especially 512e and 4Kn hard drives.
- The Atari emulators Hatari and ARAnyM, including access to native Linux mass storage devices.
- The Atari emulators MagiCMac and MagiCPC, including access to native SCSI mass storage devices.
Not officially supported Hardware
For this hardware there is positive feedback by the authors or by users. How well the mass storage hardware listed here meets the specifications and whether it correctly reports media changes (hot swap) may depend on the firmware version. Test your setup with the HDDRIVER demo version and the SCSI Driver/Firmware test suite. In case of doubt contact the hardware authors.
- ACSI2STM: Media change issues and incompatibilities with the SCSI-2 standard, at least with old firmware versions. Working according to the ACSI2STM website and according to user feedback, at least as long as SD cards are not swapped.
- BlueSCSI V1 1.1-20220917 (this hardware has been abandoned): Successfully tested with the desktop version at the internal SCSI port of a MegaSTE and TT. With a ribbon cable at the external port there were issues, though.
- BlueSCSI V2 v2025.082.02. Successfully tested with SCSI and ACSI and the desktop version. Cannot officially be supported because third parties distribute dubious modified firmware.
- SCSI2SD (this hardware has been abandoned): There have been recurring firmware issues with this hardware in the past, but it is working according to user feedback.
- SD4ST/SD4ST+: Incompatibilities with the SCSI-2 standard, at least with old firmware versions, but it is working according to the SD4ST website.
- SD slot of the ATW800/2, both MegaST and VME version. In the HDDRIVER forum there is an ATW800/2 FAQ.
- ZuluSCSI: Working according to user feedback.
- Falcons with Alternate RAM (Afterburner040, DFB1, CT*): Working according to user feedback. With a CTPCI board and HDDRIVER in Fast-RAM an IDE transfer rate of 12.8 MiB/s has been measured, with a DFB1 board 4.8 MiB/s. HDDRIVER is the fastest driver for these platforms.
- SatanDisk: Working according to user feedback.
- Raven: Working according to feedback from the hardware author and from users. With 6.6 MiB/s HDDRIVER is the fastest driver for the Raven.
- Suska-IV board: Working according to the hardware authors.
Unsupported Hardware/Emulators
At least with old firmware versions, this hardware/emulation violates specifications. New firmware may fix the bugs, but it is not possible for me to test this.
If you want to use unsupported or not officially supported hardware or hardware other than that listed, test this hardware with the HDDRIVER demo version and the SCSI Driver/Firmware test suite. If the test suite does not report errors and the demo version works, the full version will most likely also work.
Partitioning and Data Exchange
- TOS/Windows compatible partitions for data exchange with PCs and Macs without any additional software or hardware.
- The TOS partitions created when partitioning work with any AHDI compatible driver (AHDI, ICDBOOT, HuSHI, CBHD, ...).
- When creating FAT16 or FAT32 partitions, the corresponding filesystem is also created.
- Windows compatible partitioning (including FAT32) with the Atari.
- Native GPT (GUID Partition Table) support.
- Partitioning in MBR (Master Boot Record), GPT (GUID Partition Table) and super floppy format.
- Data exchange with Linux even with normal TOS partitions and without a special kernel with Atari partition support.
- Partitions can be assigned to drives A: and B:, e.g for USB floppy disk drives.
- With TOS 16 (A:-P:), with MagiC, MiNT or Big-DOS 31 (A:-Z: except U: and 1:-6:) drives.
- FAT16 partition sizes of up to 1 GiB, depending on the TOS version (see FAQ for details).
- With MagiC or MiNT access to VFAT and FAT32 partitions (long filenames, partition size up to 2 TiB).
- With MiNT access to Minix and Linux partitions.
- Automatic byteswapping for all buses and devices.
Speed, Performance and Optimizations
- Special operating modes for fast ACSI, SCSI and IDE data transfers.
- Optional blitter support for faster IDE transfers especially with STs.
- With MagiC non-blocking transfers (ACSI and SCSI): Applications keep on running while data are being transferred in the background.
- HDDRIVER is the only driver that can be booted into Fast-RAM, e.g. to increase the IDE transfer rate. Booting into Fast-RAM also saves valuable ST-RAM.
- Configurable cache size (GEMDOS cache).
- Integrated FOLDRxxx, CACHExxx, JARxxx and SCSIDRV functionality speeds up the boot process, saves memory and relieves the AUTO folder.
- The device IDs to scan are configurable, so that no time is wasted by scanning for non-existing devices during boot.
- For maximum performance and compact code, HDDRIVER is entirely coded in highly optimized 68000 and 68030 assembler.
- Optimized through the use of advanced SCSI commands (newer than SCSI-2), e.g. for SCSI2Pi and BlueSCSI.
Device and Media Maintenance
- Editing of partition data, such as partition ID or cluster size.
- Loading/Saving of entire drives or partitions from/to image files.
- Complete or partial copying of media, e.g. for cloning, backup or for exchanging data.
- Partition table recovery if the root sector or the partition table is corrupted.
- Configuration settings of SCSI, ATAPI and SATA drives can be changed, such as cache settings.
- Initiating self-tests for devices that support this feature.
- Sector test (read test and write test).
- Device scan
Other Features
- Simple and quick installation, all existing data are retained.
- Automatic detection of ACSI devices that support high capacity media, such as ICD compatible host adapters, GigaFile or UltraSatan.
- Automatic and reliable media change detection without reboot (hot-swap).
- Support for TOS compatible filesystems on rewritable optical media (DVD-RAM, DVD+RW, BD-RE).
- Configurable number of drive IDs to be reserved for removable media/memory cards.
- Boot drive selection (from which AUTO folder and ACCs are loaded) by simply pressing a key.
- Support for dual boot (operating system selection by keystroke) for TOS and Atari's System V Release 4 (ASV)
- Write protection for selected drives and for boot and root sectors.
- Auto-Sleep, Auto-Park and password protection for ZIP and JAZ drives.
- Configurable device and partition order, configurable LUN support.
- Multi-media drives: DVD-RAM, DVD+RW and BD-RE media can be used like hard drives, e.g. for backups.
- With SCSI2Pi/PiSCSI/BlueSCSI up to 8 emulated devices with the MegaSTE's internal host adapter.
- With TT and Falcon SCSI HDDRIVER's SCSI Driver supports linked SCSI commands and 32 LUNs (sub-units).
- Optimization by usage of commands newer than SCSI-2, which are supported by optical drives, SCSI2Pi or BlueSCSI.
- CHS, LBA-28 and LBA-48 addressing for IDE/SATA drives.
- SCSI emulation/translation for IDE, ATAPI and SATA drives.
- Execution of HDDRIVER modules when booting.
- Automatically detects device properties (supported commands) and TOS features and adapts intelligently to them.
- HDDRIVER togeher with ETOS_FIX fixes bugs in EmuTOS and provides higher transfer rates.
Supported Specifications
HDDRIVER and all tools are based on open API specifications and offer maximum compatibility.
Scope of Delivery
- The HDDRIVER software package includes a number of useful tools.
- All programs are bilingual (English and German).
- Detailed English and German manual as a PDF, optionally also printed.
- Full version and updates available as download.
- Optionally available on a floppy disk or bootable pre-installed on an SD card.
- Reliable English support directly from the author.
- The Hddriver News App for Android keeps you updated.