4.2GB - Formatted or Unformatted?

[Hyperspeed]

I've fancied a nice Quantum 4.3GB drive but this size seem to just overlap the 4.2GB limit of the old filesystem.

Without upgrading to the D64/SFS filesystems, would this 4.3GB be addressable once formatted (since the formatted space would be way less than 4.3GB)?

Does the old filesystem limit of 4.2GB refer to the drive capacity formatted or unformatted/geometry?

Also, on a SCSI system, how would the old file system behave with a theoretical 7x 4.2GB drives = 29.4GB?

[Effy]

Why making it so diffiult for yourself ? Just use only 4 Gb and your problem is temporarely solved until you upgrade to OS3.9  :lol:

[Hyperspeed]

Well it's hard to get a 4.0GB drive and I like the Quantum Fireball. It's a good model - however it only comes in 3.2GB and 4.3GB sizes (maybe a 9GB...).

It would be easy to get a 3.2GB one but much nicer to get 1,126MB extra with the 4.3GB size!

Seagate Barracuda ran too hot for my liking despite it being a bit quieter.

[Effy]

HDtoolbox will probably detect the real size and with the slider you can decided to use only the first 4 Gb, or just to be sure you can take 3,9 Gb from which the first partition may not be bigger than 2 Gb ...

[Hyperspeed]

Hrrrm, I hadn't considered this before - pruning the size down to fit the 4.2GB limit!

So if you had a 4.3GB drive and the sum of your partitions was no more than 4.2GB (checked with check4gb.lha) and you left the last bit empty the file system wouldn't address the entire disk and just the sum of the set up partitions?

If this works with Phase5's scsiconfig partition software then I'm prepared to waste 102.4MB in favour of gaining 1,024MB!

(A 4.3GB drive instead of a 3.2GB)

:-D

[FirstAkir]

Just use two partitions. Shouldn't be that hard.

And just why would you need more then 4GB for an amiga anyways? Video Editing?

[DamageX]

Harddrives are already formatted when you get them (physical format, not logical format) but some people (including drive manufacturers) will talk about 4.2GB = 4,200,000,000 bytes while others will talk about 4.0GB = (the limit of 32-bit addressing) = 4,294,967,296 bytes

And yes, the 4GB limitation does not mean that you need a drive of 4GB or less, you just won't be able to use the additional space.

[pVC]

You can have several disks on SCSI. And disk's size doesn't matter until you don't use more than first 4GB of them. And remember that every partition's max size is 2GB with old FFS.

[amigagr]

an other option, before you do anything with the disk, is to install nsdpatch
for 64bit scsi update and the ffs64patch
for 64bit fastfilesystem support.
these patches are usefull only on Workbench3.1

-edit-
in any case, if you want to make the first partition bootable,limit it's size to no more than 2gb

[Hyperspeed]

With Check4GB on Aminet, does it also check for partitions no bigger than 2GB or just the entire drive no bigger than 4GB?

The reason I ask is because it lists individual devices (hence partitions) with a Yes/No next to them.

I read that the older HDToolBox don't like partitions bigger than 1GB...?

[amigagr]

Hyperspeed wrote:
I read that the older HDToolBox don't like partitions bigger than 1GB...?

i recently run the hdtoolbox from the install disk of a590, the hard disk expansion for amiga500, of course i run it on the a1200 and with sfs on the disk, but it could ''see'' up to 2gb! partitions. this hdtoolbox i think is from wb1.2.

-edit-
probably the higher barrier has to do and with the proper or not scsi.device.

[Hyperspeed]

EDIT: Double-post.

[Hyperspeed]

Damn, I still can't use the 'Quote' button on IBrowse 2.3...

Well, I won't want a partition bigger than 2GB for the time being, when I upgrade to 3.5/3.9 maybe.

Just another curio here... what is the largest size of PCMCIA SRAM that the A600/A1200 can take. I've seen some SRAM models in 6MB varieties but I heard once that 4MB was the limit of carddisk.device

Hyperspeed wrote:
Damn, I still can't use the 'Quote' button on IBrowse 2.3...

Yype '['quote']' to start a quote block, and '['/quote']' to end the block.

Obviously you don't need the quotation marks.

[darksun9210]

also bear in mind that disk manufaturers gigabytes are 1,000,000,000 bytes, not 1,073,741,824 bytes. :-o

so your "4.3Gb" disk is only 4100.8Mb. 4.8Mb over the 4096Mb limit. :-D

4Mb isn't a big deal to loose.
just make sure your paritions add up to less than 4096Mb if you don't have any patch software or updated fastfilesystem installed.

 :-)

as regards to a multidisk scsi setup... it'll have as many disks/partitions as you like on there.