Understanding WHDLoad – The Hard Disk Starter Guide

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Details: Written by: Super User; Category: Topics; Published: 14 May 2026; Hits: 66

WHDLoad — Starting Games from Hard Disk

WHDLoad solves the classic Amiga problem: How do I get a floppy disk game onto the hard disk? The answer: not with a trick, but with a complete system. Here we explain how it works and why you need to know about it.

Why is this even a problem?

Most classic Amiga games were developed as floppy disk games — they launch their own bootblocks, patch the OS, access hardware directly, and expect their disk in drive 0. Simply copying to DH0: overwrites critical bits or the game cannot find its data.

Bert Jahn's WHDLoad (actively developed since 1996) solves this with a clever architecture: Each game gets a slave — a small patching program that tricks the game into thinking it is running from disk, while actually everything comes from the hard disk.

How it works

The components:

WHDLoad (the main program) — loads the slave and the game, installs traps for hardware accesses, sets up memory.
Slave — game-specific script (approx. 1-20 KB) that knows patches, data paths and start parameters. One per game.
Game data — the original ADF contents, as individual files or .ipf images.
Key file — licence file (bought once, for all games). Without it WHDLoad runs with annoying pop-ups.

Installing WHDLoad

Download: whdload.de → current version (18.9 or newer, 2025).
Unpack on Amiga, run Install-WHDLoad. Installs to SYS:WHDLoad/.
Optional: Buy key file (~10 € one-off at whdload.de). Place as WHDLoad.key next to the executable.
Set assign: Assign WHDLoad: SYS:WHDLoad in User-Startup.

Installing games: the slave workflow

Find slave: whdload.de has slaves for over 5,000 games. Search for your title, download Turrican2_v1.7.lha or similar.
Unpack LHA to Games:Turrican2/.
Copy original disk content of the game disks as image files (expected by the .slave file) into it. Usually in data/ or directly in the folder.
Open start icon — WHDLoad launches, game starts from HD.

💡 Shortcut: Collections like WHDLoad Dats (from Aminet or the EAB forum) contain all slaves with data. One download, completely installable.

Front-ends: browsers for your collection

iGame — THE frontend. Screenshots, genres, filter, cover. Auto-scan for WHDLoad slaves. github.com/emeneo/iGame
XBench — older classic with large DB.
Amiberry-Launcher — integrated with the Pi emulator.

Troubleshooting

"Insert Disk X" although on HD: Disk image names do not match what the slave expects. Use tools like ReadDisk in the correct format.
"Requires more CHIP memory": A500 with 512 KB is not enough, you need at least 1 MB Chip RAM.
Random crashes: Slave version outdated → load newer slave package.
"Could not find slave": Path problem, check WHDLoad assign in User-Startup.
Game runs too fast: Precise timing slaves missing, start with PreLoad option if necessary: PRELOAD=0.