Adding new SCSI HD to my A2000

[Pat the Cat]

right now, I am running OS3.9....so to be clear, I need to boot with 3.1 and begin the configuration?

No, you don't HAVE to.

What you could do is, set the SCSI ID of one drive to an unused number. Putting the Logical Unit Number to the same value should avoid conflicts with your existing drive.

Then, plug connect it to your existing setup, and see if HDToolbox will let you access the drive.

Probably not, because it is already formatted (being an older drive).

Technically SCSI supports hot plug, but not hot unplug (you can add a drive to a live system, but not remove it without crashing the system).

Or you can err on the safe side, and power off before connecting the drive.

Either your Amiga will not boot, or it will. After that, it's a question if HDToolbox can make sense of the existing partition information.

I understand there is a hard coded limit of 65K maximum surfaces, so it will almost definitely overshoot that.

BUT, if you don't take a shot, you can never hit.

One issue can be, with a 10K drive, you have to reboot anyway. Because the drive takes longer to spin up to working speed. Should not be a problem with the Cheetahs, they are quite new, in comparison to older 10K drives.

This is why there is some sense to spinning up the drive, then attaching it.

[Pat the Cat]

Then, plug connect it to your existing setup, and see if HDToolbox will let you access the drive.

Probably not, because it is already formatted (being an older drive).


these are new drives, never been used?

OK, my mistake.

Just as well really, at least HDToolbox didn't have to worry about existing partition info.

[Pat the Cat]

Looks like it gave me 15x5Gig drives ~ 45Gigs for one type of config. I assume the rest of the space is wasted?

No. It gave you 15 X 5 gig PARTITIONS.

Big difference. A disk icon sitting on your Workbench doesn't mean it's a complete drive. It means that there's a folder attached to the icon, somewhere on your system, or maybe on a different system over a network.

15 times 5 is 45? Looks more like 75 to me.

I guess what you could try is removing the partitions, and increasing size of each one to 7.8 Gb - that should be just about possible.

Theoretically, about 120, which together with your boot partition, brings up to about 128GB, which should be the limit.

[Pat the Cat]

You need to manually configure the drive geometry to use the full space on your drive.

OK, but how do I go about figuring this out?

Thanks

Page 21 of the first link you posted gives maximum values.

I think you are going to have to limit track surfaces to 65535, the maximum is 90,774 for the 300GB version.

But it's all there mate. You just got to figure out what the maximum values are that 3.9 will like..

... and look on the bright side, that's LOADS more than a 3.1 machine could access.

I still think it will crap out about 128GB, but you are the explorer in this case - you might just find out something new.