I've found its best to use Basilisk II to get your HDA images ready to go before you try to use them on real hardware. I use Disk Jockey to make the size I want, mount it in Basilisk II so I can format the drive, install any system software and applications I need then copy the HDA file to my SD when I'm done. Seems to work pretty good.
Not sure. If it supports using .hda files as hard drive images I’d imagine it would.Does SheepShaver work for preparing images as well?