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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: leirbag28 on November 15, 2007, 06:01:01 PM

Title: External USB drive..........why can't I read more than 2gigs?
Post by: leirbag28 on November 15, 2007, 06:01:01 PM

 I have a Subway USB card using Poseiden on my a1200, but when I plug in a 30gig Laptop USB drive, it only reads 2gigs.................same when I plug it into a PC.  What gives?  Is it because of Fat95?  but then again I formatted it on the PC side and it still only reads 2 gigs.

Title: Re: External USB drive..........why can't I read more than 2gigs?
Post by: Matt_H on November 15, 2007, 06:25:44 PM

Maybe for some reason there's only a 2GB partition created on the drive?

Title: Re: External USB drive..........why can't I read more than 2gigs?
Post by: Robert17 on November 15, 2007, 06:40:52 PM

Is it formatted with Fat95? 2gb partition limit?

rob

Title: Re: External USB drive..........why can't I read more than 2gigs?
Post by: wurzel on November 15, 2007, 10:19:02 PM

I'm not an expert, but I offer an opinion.

AFAIK, large USB drives are formatted using NTFS (sp?).

Even PC's can only read large USB drives with NTFS, not Fat95.

To read (not write, unfortunately) you can use GiggleDisk from Aminet.

Having said that, I did repartition my 80gb drive into 30gb with Fat95 and 50gb with NTFS, and both the miggy and pc can read all the 30gb. But, it was formatted using Partition Magic so maybe that gives a clue?

Title: Re: External USB drive..........why can't I read more than 2gigs?
Post by: pyrre on November 15, 2007, 10:32:23 PM

Quote

AFAIK, large USB drives are formatted using NTFS (sp?).
Even PC's can only read large USB drives with NTFS, not Fat95.

I have an external USB drive with 80 gig formatted with fat32.
Still have my original win98se boot partition...
though, the computer i used it in is... just gone...
seem to have miss placed it

though I have not tried it in an amiga. do not have USB. yet...

Title: Re: External USB drive..........why can't I read more than 2gigs?
Post by: leirbag28 on November 15, 2007, 10:44:45 PM

Ok then.....but I did format the Drive in Windows and tried it on Amiga.....it didnt work......then I formatted it on Amiga and  that didnt work either...........both ways only allowed me to read 2gigs.  

Can I read and write Fat32 and NTFS on the Amiga?

how can I make this work as a 30gig USB drive on the Amiga?

Title: Re: External USB drive..........why can't I read more than 2gigs?
Post by: da9000 on November 16, 2007, 07:21:47 AM

FAT32 volume/partition MAX SIZE=8TB, so that's not the problem.

One other possibility (although I doubt it in this case) is that certain USB mass storage devices don't cope well with very large disks (like 128GB limit, etc), but yours isn't that large (30GB right?)

Yet another possibility (although I highly doubt it in this case) is that drive was "soft clipped" with the native ATA command set (I think it's HPA - host protected area). You can use tools like MHDD to unHPA the drive. Same can be done with SCSI disks, although I forget the correct term used for that case. The tool for that case is SCU (SCSI Command Utility).
EDIT:
Or another form of that: what pyrre suggests in the post below. Duh! Thanks pyrre!


Maybe try partitioning with another program?

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table

Title: Re: External USB drive..........why can't I read more than 2gigs?
Post by: pyrre on November 16, 2007, 12:07:08 PM

Yet another possibility:
Check the dip settings on the drive. many drives has capacity limiting function...

That happened to my 80 gig... it only reported 15gigs...
remove the dip... everything was ok...