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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: GMeanie on September 18, 2007, 01:28:38 PM

Title: Larger HD
Post by: GMeanie on September 18, 2007, 01:28:38 PM

Is there a way to get a larger HD with the IDE in an amiga 4000? Using workbench 3.1.
I read there is a 2GB limit.
"Hard Drive Controller:
IDE (2Gb maximum capacity)"

Title: Re: Larger HD
Post by: rockape on September 18, 2007, 02:23:03 PM

Hi,

See

http://wonkity.com/~wblock/a4000hard/comquest.html

And

http://www.gregdonner.org/os39faq/os39faq.html

Kind Regards, Michael

aka rockape

Title: Re: Larger HD
Post by: Piru on September 18, 2007, 02:40:43 PM

Quote

Is there a way to get a larger HD with the IDE in an amiga 4000?

Yes.

You need filesystem capable of 64bit access (standard 3.1 FFS won't do, but ffstd64 (http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/ffstd64) might help. SFS or PFS3 are nice). You also need to patch the scsi.device to handle 64bit access. It can be done with scsi43, amigaos 3.5/3.9 or idefix (http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/IDEfix97) for example. When formatting >4GB are partition with OS 3.1 format you must always use "quick format". OS 3.1 HDToolBox will also display funny values when it identifies a large HDD, so you might want to use a replacement partitioning tool.

In any case, check4gb (http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/check4gb) is useful when hacking things up.

Final note: Various OS 3.1 components don't handle huge partition size correctly: c:format, c:info, installer and Workbench are affected at least. These problems are mostly not fatal however, just annoying (wrong free storage displayed, installer complaining disk is full when it obviously isn't). The only potentially fatal component is the disk format operation. You must always remember to use the "quickformat" option.

Quote

"Hard Drive Controller: IDE (2Gb maximum capacity)"

That's incorrect. The controller doesn't have any limit, the driver does. The stock OS 3.1 device driver is limited to 4GB. IDEFix/OS3.5/3.9 driver have limit of 137GB (128GiB).

Title: Re: Larger HD
Post by: GMeanie on September 18, 2007, 03:58:38 PM

So by going to 3.9 Should fix my problems?

Title: Re: Larger HD
Post by: Thomas on September 18, 2007, 07:51:42 PM

Quote

IDEFix/OS3.5/3.9 driver have limit of 160GB (137GiB).

This should read 137 GB (128 GiB).

GB = metric gigabtyes (10^9)
GiB = binary gigabytes (2^30)

137 * 10^9 = 128 * 2^30 (approximately)

Quote

So by going to 3.9 Should fix my problems?

You didn't mention any problems.

OS 3.9 allows you to use hard drives bigger than 4 GB if you are careful to use only components of OS 3.9 or third-party softwares which support OS 3.9 functionality. It does not magically fix every older program.

Bye,
Thomas

Title: Re: Larger HD
Post by: Piru on September 18, 2007, 07:56:36 PM

@Thomas

Quote

This should read 137 GB (128 GiB).

Indeed, some sort of short circuit in my brain.

The actual limit comes from 28bit "address" field in the LBA28 ATA instruction set. 2 ^ 28 blocks, and with HDDs the blocksize is 512 bytes, thus maximum of 2 ^ 28 * 512 bytes (128GiB).

LBA48 ATA standard (in ATA-6) expanded this addressing to 2 ^ 48, thus giving 2 ^ 48 * 512 bytes (128 PiB). That ought to be enough for anybody... ;-)