"Preparing HD for AmigaOS3.1" for beginners ... or not ????

[Effy]

I have a very tiny problem that I am not supposed to have ...
After having trouble to get my 20 Gb IDE hd working again on my Z4 Powerflyer, I decided to give up and start all over again. Booting with a new Emergency Floppy didn´t work because I got strange errors during startup sequence.
Okay, then the hard way. Boot from Install3.1 floppy, HDtoolbox, the adviced sequence of "change drive type - low level format - verify data on drive - partition - reboot". That is the correct way, isn´t it But after a reboot there is no icon in my workbench of BOOT: ... so I load HDtoolbox again and to my not so happy surprise I see that nothing has changed at all, like I never did any partitionning  :pissed:
That´s why I used in the title "for beginners ... or not ??" because it all looks to simple but still I can´t get it to work ...

[Orjan]

You don´t need to low-level format the drive, that has already been done at the factory... What you must do, however, is save the changes to the drive after you have partitioned the drive, otherwise nothing will have changed on it when you reboot..

[Effy]

Orjan : have I forgotten to write that in my post Trust me, I DID a "save changes on drive" and then "exit" and then I got a window telling me that I need to do a reboot first before changes take place ... been there, done that, but it didn´t make a difference ...

[zipper]

And how big partition(s) did you try to make?

[Effy]

A (Zorro4) Powerflyer will divide any big harddrive into partitions of 4 Gb each. That is standard, so the Amiga thinks he has got several 4 Gb harddrives. So in the first "harddrive" I tried to make a BOOT partition of 49 Mb ... how difficult can this be

[Thomas]

I hope the low-level-format didn't work because IDE drives usally are destroyed by llf commands (there is no llf command in the IDE standard and different drives do different things when receiving such a command). However, if you did the llf to one of the 4GB LUNs then it hopefully was ignored by the Powerflyer.

Well, what does FastATAPrefs say about the drive's unit ? Perhaps something like "Split mode enabled but drive was partitioned in non-split mode" ?

Did you run FastATA.driver in your startup-sequence ?

Does partitioning of one of the other 4GB parts work ?

What happens if you disable split mode and try to partition the entire hdd ?

How did you clean the drive so that you were able to install it again ?

What were the problems you had with the drive initially which made you try to start all over again ?

Does the drive work on the internal IDE bus ?

Did you check the correct placement of cables and jumpers ? A loose cable can well cause strange effects.

Why doesn't your emergency floppy work ?

Bye,
Thomas

[Effy]

Interesting questions Thomas ...  :-)

-Did you run FastATA.driver in your startup-sequence ?
 There is normally not enough place to mount the software on an already filled Install3.1 floppy ... but I tried that too,including the AllegroCDFS software ... no better result so I went back to the original floppy ...

-Does partitioning of one of the other 4GB parts work ?
Didn´t try it because the A1200 looks at the first 2 Gb of any harddrive, doesn´t it ??

-What happens if you disable split mode and try to partition the entire hdd ?
Now this is interesting because to my surprise the option "split" is disabled ... don´t know why ...

-What were the problems you had with the drive initially which made you try to start all over again ?
Now this is easy to answer, just referring to a topic here ...

-Does the drive work on the internal IDE bus ?
Gosh, where could I find an old 2,5" cable for that

-Did you check the correct placement of cables and jumpers ? A loose cable can well cause strange effects.
Checked that, it´s supposed to be a standard procedure ...

-Why doesn't your emergency floppy work ?
Startup sequence gives error on ">" sign that it doesn´t know. But according to DirOpus on my other working Amiga this sign is not even there on the floppy, but it does have that sign in the startup sequence of the Emergency Disc on the CDrom ... but still the OS 3.9 CDrom is mounted, but I can not load HDtoolbox ...

[Thomas]

-Does partitioning of one of the other 4GB parts work ?
Didn´t try it because the A1200 looks at the first 2 Gb of any harddrive, doesn´t it ??

The A1200 looks at the first 4GB ob any harddrive. And as it sees five harddrives in you case, it can access the first 4GB of all five drives. That's the purpose of the FastATA's split mode.

-What happens if you disable split mode and try to partition the entire hdd ?
Now this is interesting because to my surprise the option "split" is disabled ... don´t know why ...

Well, I'd like to make the drive completely empty, but I'm not entirely sure how to tell this to the FastATA software.

If it is possible, you should connect the HDD to a PC and create a partition on it. This should delete all Amiga partitions and FastATA settings on the drive.

For an Amiga-only solution I would use this procedure:
boot from the install disk,
open a shell window,
run fastata.driver from whichever disk it is on,
run FastATAPrefs and make sure the split mode is off,
save prefs but don't reboot,
run HDToolbox to check if split mode is off,
even if not, kill the RDB anyway. Here is a program for that: http://home.t-online.de/home/thomas-rapp/killrdb.lha

I'd also check if the drive keeps data written to it, or if there is some fault. Perhaps it has a serious read error in the beginning and therefore the new partition table wasn't written permanently. However, I cannot suggest programs for this task because I usually write small utilities for that myself, if needed.

Bye,
Thomas

[Effy]

I really need to give you all a major big thank you for all the very good high quality advice you have given me. I really hoped it would all answer my fears, but it all turned out to be totally different ... I have given the answer already in my other topic but I shall give it again here :

One week later, after a lot of Chianti italian red wine, a lot of headaches, and a two day sickness, I decided to give it another go and try a really dumb (?) idea of one of our Amiga Club members, changing the IDE cable by another one. As I thought, a not so intelligent idea .. but this really stupid thought of mine turns out to be one of the biggest screw ups of my last years, because it WAS the IDE cable that has been the cause of all my trouble !! I used another one and suddenly everything worked again, the HD and the CDrom ... man, can you imagine how stupid I suddenly felt  :-?

So in case I did not get through : THANKS FOR ALL THE EFFORTS !! It did not always help but it did give me a safe feeling of being heard by people that know a lot more of it than I do and from that point of view this forum is like a heaven for those in need of help ...

[odin]

Heh, sometimes life can be too simple eh :-). Good that it's working now!