Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Author Topic: HDTools (3.1.4) and Partitioning/Setting up Compact Flash IDE Drive  (Read 1877 times)

Description:

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Beast96GTTopic starter

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Join Date: Aug 2008
  • Posts: 191
    • Show only replies by Beast96GT
Sooo...   This should be simple--but it's frustrating me to the core.   

I'm following a guide https://lyonsden.net/installing-amiga-os-3-1-4-part-3-installing-workbench-3-1-4/ to setup a CF drive in OS 3.1.4.   Clean install, everything.   

I'm booting from my 3.1.4 Install disk and going into HDTools.   I "Define New" drive type and "Read Configuration."   Everything works.   However, when I hit OK after defining the new drive type, it wants to write to the Install Disk in DF0, and then says it's FULL.    I can only cancel from there and it tells me it can't open the "Drive Definitions" and forces me to cancel all the way out.   

UG!   Why does it want to write to the FULL Install disk to proceed?    Is there a work around for this?  I can't imagine someone else hasn't run into this before.      Do I need to make some room on that Install disk?   I really hate to do that--these are original disks.   Any help is appreciated!

-Chris
 

Offline Pat the Cat

Drag the HDToolbox icon to the RAM disk and run it from there.

EDIT: Be aware that if you are creating large partitions with Fast File system, you will want to increase sector size from 512 to 4096 (measured in bytes). Also you may not want to use FFs anyway. The advanced options are there for a reason...
« Last Edit: May 17, 2021, 12:53:05 AM by Pat the Cat »
"To recurse is human. To iterate, divine."

A1200, Vanilla, Surf Squirrel, SD Card, KS 3.0/3.z, PCMCIA dev
A500, Vanilla, A570, Rev 5, KS 1.2/1.3 Testbench system
Rasp Pi, UAE4ARM, 3D laser scanner, experimental, hoping for AmigaOS4Arm, based on Watterott Fabscan Pi
 

Offline Beast96GTTopic starter

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Join Date: Aug 2008
  • Posts: 191
    • Show only replies by Beast96GT
Drag the HDToolbox icon to the RAM disk and run it from there.

EDIT: Be aware that if you are creating large partitions with Fast File system, you will want to increase sector size from 512 to 4096 (measured in bytes). Also you may not want to use FFs anyway. The advanced options are there for a reason...

Good information.    I'm planning on making a 4 GB partition for Workbench and then using the rest of it for everything else.   Do you have recommendations for the file system for these?    And set the sector size for both partitions to 4096?    Thanks!!
 

Offline Pat the Cat

That sounds like a good plan.

PfsAIO is the preferred file system, but it has a maximum safe partition size of 100GB (probably a little less). That has a sector size of 1024. And do make sure you get the latest version from Aminet because that's the one that is friendly with 3.14.

The reason is that it doesn't need validation every boot, and is much more reliable in cases of power failure combined with disk writes (FFs usually corrupts when this happens).
tart
Having a 4gb max partition at the start is useful for programs that only work when loaded from that area.

However, in terms of a bootable Workbench partition, that can go anywhere. It doesn't have to be at the start of a disk. And you can select a different boot medium from the early startup menu (holding down both mouse buttons on boot).

You can have have multiple Workbench partitions with different boot priorities, letting you select an alternative if the main one is not accessible because it's become corrupted through file virus or similar.

Don't expect to get it pecfectly right first time. :)
« Last Edit: May 17, 2021, 12:54:35 PM by Pat the Cat »
"To recurse is human. To iterate, divine."

A1200, Vanilla, Surf Squirrel, SD Card, KS 3.0/3.z, PCMCIA dev
A500, Vanilla, A570, Rev 5, KS 1.2/1.3 Testbench system
Rasp Pi, UAE4ARM, 3D laser scanner, experimental, hoping for AmigaOS4Arm, based on Watterott Fabscan Pi