This is my current setup and problem:

I have Sheepshaver running on a Windows 7 with the latest MacDrive software installed so that I can access a USB HFS+ Drive (1TB) in windows (and therefor also access it in sheepshaver/MacOS9). I only use/need reading access.

In windows 7, I can read the files and folders fine with MacDrive. I can see all my files. But when I access the drive in sheepshaver, only about half the files/folders are showing. Some folders only show a couple of files while there should be more then 100+ files in that folder.

What is causing this? Is there a solutions?

I have done some test with partitioning a 500gd usb harddisk into 115 gb parts. Same problem

Also formated an USB stick of 16GB with HFS+ and copied some files to it. Same problem, not all files are beeing shown in sheepshaver.

I'm not sure OS 9 can correctly access volumes larger than 2 GB. Also, you could try using SheepShaver to format the volume, unmount it and then copy the required files onto it in Windows.

Thank you for your reply. I will try testing with 2gb partition.

The problem with copying files in windows is that i lose the forkfiles and that makes the files unusable.

I have a huge amount of macdraw files that I need to access and sometimes change. If i need to split everything up into 2 gb partitions then the archive will become too hard to manage.

It seems I'm wrong with the 2 GB limit. There's a discussion about that over here.

Yeah; we've hashed it out a few times; I don't think the partition size is the issue here.

If you have less than 3,000 files per folder, does the problem go away? I seem to recall issues with large numbers of files in a single folder under some versions of Mac OS.

I wasn't aware SheepShaver could work that way.

Would it be an option to create a very large disk image on the drive, and then store the files in the disk image? Then you wouldn't have to split everything up.

I don't think the amount of files per folder is the main problem. The root folder that has 16 subfolders and 3 files. They are not beeing seen bij sheepshaver correctly.

You can view the directory tree here :
https://drive.google.com/open?id=12eeLt ... 2oUmpDMTio

It seems i'm having a hard time creating a disk image of a certain folder that sheepshaver can read. I'm using Max OS X (10.13) to create a disk image of a folder that is on a HFS+ USB stick. It creates a DMG file. When trying to access it in sheepshaver, sheepshaver always wants to initialise and wipe the DMG file.

I just wanted to find out if the problem still remains if I work with disk images.

If you really just want to read from the HFS USB stick,
could it be a solution to create a disk image and read from that after mounting it in SheepShaver?

I would throw your files onto a 30GB image for you, if my ISP wasn't that terrible slow.
You might try MacOS Leopard in a VM to handle your files and copy them to an image SS can use.
Leo Server is hosted here: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/mac-os-x-server-105
If you care reading the comments, there also is a pre-built instance for VMWare.

My guess is there are too many interfaces daisy chained.
MacOS, SheepShaver, MyComputer, Windows, USB drivers, MacDrive...
It may be near impossible to name the culprit of your problem.

Edit: Seems you were following the same track, while I posted, flood.
A disk image will be best created in OSX 10.4, 10.5 or 10.6.
Leopard was the last OSX flavour to write to NDIF images directly.
There always is dd and Terminal, but thats not point and click.

I suppose you use Disk Utility to create the image. Make sure you choose "read/write" for the format. Compressed and read-only formats cannot be read by SheepShaver.

Edit: It seems that disk images created with Disk Utility in macOS 10.13 cannot be read by SheepShaver, although they are HFS+. I assumed that it would still work, like in previous OSX/macOS versions. Apparently not.

Edit 2: But an empty disk image that will work in SheepShaver can still be made. Choose read/write and no partition scheme. In macOS you can mount that image and copy files to it. The image and the files on it can be read by SheepShaver fine.

Thanks to everybody that is helping me trying to solve this problem.

@Ronald:

I will try making the empty image. But getting the files onto the image will be a problem if i only want to use sheepshaver, because sheepshaver is not reading the hfs+ correctly , so i will not be able to do the copying there.

I'm also running  max os x (10.13) in virtualbox. It can read the hfs+ usb harddrive without problems (and it doesn't need macdrive to do that). The only problem i have with this setup is that when i copy macdraw files from the hfs+ harddrive to something else (like a hfs+ usb stick), it loses the fork files. So i think (but have yet to test it) that when i copy the usb harddive onto an image in mac os x (10.13), the files will not be usable in mac os 9.


 Luckely I have an old powerbook at work (one of the last series that still has the non-intel powerpc cpu and is also able to run os9 on top of the os x that is installed on this laptop). This old powerbook is able to read the large hfs+ 1TB usb harddrive correctly and also still handles the fork files correctly when copying the files onto something else.

So when at work on monday i will try to make an empty image and copy the files that are on harddrive onto that image.

 One question. How big can the image be so that sheepshaver still can read it correctly? The amount of data that i have is around 400-500gb. It would be great if i could fit it all into one image.

I meant copying within macOS 10.13. (The name of the OS changed from Mac OS X to OSX to macOS. Mac OS (with capital M and without X) is the classic OS, macOS is the name since 10.12)

Strange, if this is all done within macOS 10.13, the harddrive mounted in macOS, the USB stick mounted in macOS, and then copying the files within macOS directly from the HD to the USB stick, I cannot imagine how the files would loose their resource forks if both HD and USB stick are indeed HFS+ formatted. The same for copying from the HD to a disk image within macOS 10.3.

That is a lot. I never tried to use images larger than 20GB. I do not know what the size limit is. There may also be a limit to the number of files. Some reported using images 60GB or larger. But 500GB?

I have successfully created a 450gb disk image. First testing seems promising. At the moment all files that were copied onto the image is beeing shown correctly in sheepshaver.

I am also able to copy the files from the hfs+ usb harddisk onto that image in macOS 10.13 without any problems and without losing resource forks.

The only thing that i noticed is that in sheepshaver I can not copy files onto the image (in macOS 10.13 i have no problems). But because i only need reading access in sheepshaver this isn't really a problem for me.

So if further testing goes well, i think this problem is solved.

Thank you all for your input.