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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: dougal on November 21, 2011, 05:47:30 PM
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I tried a guide to setup SFS on a real hard drive using winuae.
It worked in winuae but when i plugged it into my real Amiga it would only see the first partition (the bootable one). Also HD toolbox does not always load on the real Amiga.
Where have i gone wrong? I used a guide on Amiga Wiki or something like that to set it up.
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How big is your second partition?
If you're getting outside the 4GB system won't be recognising the size with it's default scsi.device.
So you either need to have partitions <= 4GB or load an upgraded scsi.device via loadmodule command or via Blizkick (Blizzard accelerators), RemApollo (Apollo accelerators) or via a flash solution like Deneb's flash or kickflash depending on our Amiga.
Loadmodule is the easiest solution and works just fine.
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How big is your second partition?
If you're getting outside the 4GB system won't be recognising the size with it's default scsi.device.
So you either need to have partitions <= 4GB or load an upgraded scsi.device via loadmodule command or via Blizkick (Blizzard accelerators), RemApollo (Apollo accelerators) or via a flash solution like Deneb's flash or kickflash depending on our Amiga.
Loadmodule is the easiest solution and works just fine.
The 2nd partition is about 4031MB. That is larger than 4GB right?
But one of the other partitions (I think the 3rd or 4th) is @ about 1.5GB and that is not seen either.
Maybe because of the 2nd partition being larger than 4GB?
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What is this loadmodule and how can i use it?
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The 2nd partition is about 4031MB. That is larger than 4GB right?
But one of the other partitions (I think the 3rd or 4th) is @ about 1.5GB and that is not seen either.
This isn't about the size, but where the partition is located. Anything beyond the first 4GB will not be seen unless if you patch your scsi.device.
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Ok so what i noticed is this. The first partition boots and works fine in SFS. The other partitions are not seen in workbench. BUT, if i set them as FFS instead of SFS they work and are seen.
I dont get it because i gave each partition the same Mask etc.. settings as the first (Which boots and works fine in SFS)
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BUT, if i set them as FFS instead of SFS they work and are seen.
Word of warning: They likely only appear to work and randomly trash anything below the 4GB.
See http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/check4gb
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Here are instructions how to install the needed software for big harddrives in WinUAE:
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=446135&postcount=27
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Here are instructions how to install the needed software for big harddrives in WinUAE:
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=446135&postcount=27
I dont have Amigaforever.
I tried with Winuae but when i try to load loadmodule/loadmodule scsi.device it says object is not of required type.
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Any ideas?
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More information needed. Which file is located where? What's your current directory when you enter the command?
Did you inadvertently enter loadmodule before you entered loadmodule/loadmodule? If yes, enter cd / to move back to the higher directory.
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More information needed. Which file is located where? What's your current directory when you enter the command?
Did you inadvertently enter loadmodule before you entered loadmodule/loadmodule? If yes, enter cd / to move back to the higher directory.
I unpacked the files (using windows) in the work folder and mounted it as the second hard drive in winuae.
Then in shell i went to work: and then ran loadmodule/loadmodule scsi.device
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I need to sort this out soon coz i'm running out of space with the 170MB noisy HD that came factory installed.
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I unpacked the files (using windows) in the work folder and mounted it as the second hard drive in winuae.
Then in shell i went to work: and then ran loadmodule/loadmodule scsi.device
It is quite unpleasant to help you because you don't answer the questions and the little information you give is so unprecise that it's almost useless.
I guess you didn't preserve the directory structure when you unpacked the archives, did you?
And you completely missed the patchstrip command, didn't you? This is the most important step before loadmodule.
I need to sort this out soon coz i'm running out of space with the 170MB noisy HD that came factory installed.
This is your problem, not mine, isn't it? So why don't you put a little bit of effort into supplying the required information to help you? Or try to understand what's going on and help yourself?
Or just stay with the "keep it simple" principle. Now that you know that 4GB is the limit, you could simply stay below 4GB and all is fine. If 170 MB is what you have now and what served you for the past 10 years, 4000 MB should be overwhelmingly much and last for at least 5 or 10 years more, shouldn't it?
So if you create a 500 MB boot partition, you can install a new OS and put a backup of the old OS on it and still have more than half of the space free.
Then create a 3500 MB work partition for all the new stuff you want to install and leave the rest of the HDD alone. (Better make two 1750 MB partitions because partitions above 2GB will cause other problems you didn't even notice yet.)
All this is possible without installing patches and file systems and such. And if at some point you learn how DOS commands are entered and how the current directory and relative paths work together, you might be able to install the drivers for big harddrives without instructions. Then you can still add further partitions on the yet empty space of the HDD.
Perhaps at some point you even become interested in writing programs for AmigaOS, then you could check the developer documentation and find out yourself where the 4GB limit comes from and what is necessary to circumvent it.
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Thanks Thomas. Sorry for not describing the problem enough. I'll have another attempt at this when i get home.
I did unpack the files you said in your guide to download using WinRAR on the PC so maybe like you said the integrity might have become damaged although i never had problems before unpacking using the PC as PC is much much faster.
Will try again and post the results.
Cheers and honestly i really do appreciate your help :)
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Ok tried again. I managed to have the boot disk (HD0) and HD1 and HD2 as SFS. The rest would not be seen on WB so i set them as FFS and they work.
All good so far. Just one slight problem.
Tried copying some WhdLoad ready games to the 3rd SFS partition but when i click them rather then loading they get stuck on the WhdLoad screen where it says the credits of the WHDinstaller etc.. Tried copying games to an FFS partition and they work fine.
The 3rd SFS partition in questions is less than 1.5GB
Edit: Instead of a Format i gave it a Quick Format as the initial format. Is that bad? I am now trying a full format.
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SFS is all a mess i think... Even now stuff in the system partion is saying HD0 has a blockid error in block xxxxx expected blockid 0x424e4443, but the block says it is blockid 0x6a727778,
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I gave up... Deleted all the partitions and created them again with FFS
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SFS is all a mess i think... Even now stuff in the system partion is saying HD0 has a blockid error in block xxxxx expected blockid 0x424e4443, but the block says it is blockid 0x6a727778,
SFS works fine and i've been using it for over 10 years. People that say stuff like this usually don't bother to read or understand the docs or set it up right.
It sounds more like you made the mess of your sfs install ;)
theres some good benefits to SFS, like speed,long filenames,tolerance for large drives etc.
mech
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The rest would not be seen on WB so i set them as FFS and they work.
No, they definitely do not work correctly, although it seems so. FFS cannot access outside of the first 4GB of the harddrive. But it does not care, it simply ignores the overflow which happens when calculating the byte offset to the place where to access. This means instead of accessing the area which you reserved for the FFS partitions, it writes to an area inside the first 4GB of the harddrive which belongs to a completely different partition.
Edit: Instead of a Format i gave it a Quick Format as the initial format. Is that bad? I am now trying a full format.
Quick format is the only working way to correctly format a partition outside of the first 4GB. The Format program has the same problem as FFS. If you fully format a partition outside the first 4GB of the harddrive, it will destroy another partition inside the first 4GB.
SFS is all a mess i think... Even now stuff in the system partion is saying HD0 has a blockid error in block xxxxx expected blockid 0x424e4443, but the block says it is blockid 0x6a727778,
That's what happens when you put a FFS partition outside the first 4GB: it overwrites data of another partition. This is not a SFS problem, this problem is caused by your improper use of FFS.
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SFS is all a mess i think... Even now stuff in the system partion is saying HD0 has a blockid error in block xxxxx expected blockid 0x424e4443, but the block says it is blockid 0x6a727778,
I warned you about this. FFS only appears to work but happily trashes innocent data.
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I warned you about this. FFS only appears to work but happily trashes innocent data.
Thanks for the help. Same to Thomas.
I just couldnt get it, so i am now using FFS without problems. Shame is that i can only get 4GB (out of a 20GB hard drive) but 4GB is more than enough i guess.
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Shame is that i can only get 4GB (out of a 20GB hard drive) but 4GB is more than enough i guess.
You can get just fine the rest of the drive if you use LoadModule (http://aminet.net/package/util/boot/LoadModule) with a newer scsi.device.
So if you put LoadModule in C: and the new scsi.device for example in folder Devs:
...you only need to put as first line of your Startup-Sequence the command:
C:LoadModule Devs:scsi.device
(LoadModule command will load the new scsi.device on power up and then reboot! After that and once your system completes it's boot proccess you can enjoy your full HD capacity. Just make sure that the first partition is always under the 4GB barrier.)
Bloodwych's awesome ClassicWB packs (http://classicwb.abime.net/) once installed have some new scsi.device version under "DH0:MyFiles/LargeHD/128GB_Support/" on folders "SCSI_IDE_43.23" or "SCSI_IDE_43.24".
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Why didn't you stay with SFS for all partitions? Those partitions which are shown by SFS are safe to use and those which cross the 4GB boundary are not shown. With FFS you never know.
And why didn't you take PFS3 into account at all? Now that it's free, PFS3 is the best choice for 68k Amigas. It has similar features like SFS and is even faster. And with the PFS3ds version you can increase your space limit to 8GB (all that HDToolbox shows without a new scsi.device).
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Gosh I'm happy having used Idefix for years to avoid all this crap...