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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: superfrog76 on August 31, 2013, 10:38:21 AM
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Hi gents,
I have just purchased a 8 Gb CF card and adapter, so I can allow my 500 Mb internal hard drive to retire permanently.
Also I have a spanking new copy of 3.9 (was a good deal, a bag of original software with boxes and manuals, altho I bet that less than half will work, other than the cd's)
Altho I have discovered the pain of using an ancient file system (I have 3.1 installed); once that I have installed 3.1 from the disks on the CF card; the os got corrupted.
After researching a bit, I've discovered that the max size of a supported disk is 2 GB, with the 3.1 file system, and that the OS partition must be at the beginning of the disk, in a partition of less than a Gb.
Now my question is: what should I put on the CF card, to support the whole capacity? As now I am using the FFS I guess (the one with 3.1), I have 1 partition for WB (400 Mb), and 1.5 Gb partitions for the rest of the 8 Gb.
I've already wasted an hour installing and realized that at random, the OS write at the beginning of the disk, corrupting the WB partition, so I want to put on the disk something that works reliably.
If I install 3.9, will resolve the problem? (not sure what 3.9 uses as file system), if not, which FS should I put on? Would love to have a guide, if you know where to find one.
Thanks in advance!
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A lot of people use http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/pfs3aio
It should be possible to put that on the RDB so that you can use it for your boot partition.
On PC's I always have one partition, but my Amiga has always had two partitions. I don't know what I would do if I was starting from scratch though.
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Thanks phill, I will give it a try. I do not see any guide for it, but if the archive has a file with install instructions, I think that I can do it :)
So that would be better than SFS? I like that it was last modified last year, so it is not abandoned!
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On PC's I always have one partition
That's madness :p
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That's madness :p
+1
Should be one partition for OS & applications, and one partition for data/documents, at a minimum. All modern Windows OS's make it very easy to redirect the contents of "My Documents" to a drive other than C:.
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Maybe he means one drive - one partition :) One system drive and other(s) for storage. That's how I roll.
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+1
Should be one partition for OS & applications, and one partition for data/documents, at a minimum. All modern Windows OS's make it very easy to redirect the contents of "My Documents" to a drive other than C:.
Been there and done that, I always ended up with spare space in the program partition but out of space in the data partition. The problem gets worse the more partitions you add.
Multiple smaller partitions made sense on the amiga where a reboot would cause the filesystem to validate, but I'm not sure what problem you're trying to fix with multiple partitions per drive on windows.
With multiple drives I'd still probably try to raid0 or span them.
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There are 3 issues with drives larger than 4GB. The first is scsi.device, the second is the hard drive prep utility (HDToolbox), and the third is FastFileSystem.
OS3.9 fixes all of these. If you can use 3.9's HDToolbox (which may require you making and then booting from a 3.9 Emergency Floppy), then you can prep the drive and install a filesystem that will allow you to use all 8GB. Your boot partition must be within the first 4GB of the drive, since the 3.1 ROMs need to be able to identify and boot from it in order to load the updated 3.9 modules.
If you're staying on 3.1 it gets a little harder. You need to patch scsi.device and FastFileSystem, and you need a different prep utility - I use HDInstTools in these cases.
Easiest solution? Use a 4GB Flash card instead - no patching required. :) It'll still be a huge upgrade from your 500MB drive.
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Maybe he means one drive - one partition :) One solid state system drive and NAS storage. That's how I roll.
Fixed that for ya. Aint I nice. :D
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Easiest solution? Use a 4GB Flash card instead - no patching required. :) It'll still be a huge upgrade from your 500MB drive.
+1, Matt H , you speak wisdom.
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Been there and done that, I always ended up with spare space in the program partition but out of space in the data partition. The problem gets worse the more partitions you add.
Multiple smaller partitions made sense on the amiga where a reboot would cause the filesystem to validate, but I'm not sure what problem you're trying to fix with multiple partitions per drive on windows.
With multiple drives I'd still probably try to raid0 or span them.
Not necessarily a "problem trying to fix", as it is a documents management and organization solution. Need to back up your data? Just click "backup D:" or where ever, no mucking about picking specific data directories on C:. Same thing with data recovery, if all your documents are stored in one partition it makes it easier to recover, also applies to defragging, etcetera.
Or maybe it just appeals more to my OCD. :D
Also Windows lets you resize partitions on the fly, oftentimes without even needing a reboot. It's not as bad an OS as some people here make it out to be, LOL.
RAID0 is great, I have two Plextor SATAIII SSD drives running in RAID0 on one of my machines and it's smokin' fast, but I wouldn't recommend it for critical data storage.
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There are 3 issues with drives larger than 4GB. The first is scsi.device, the second is the hard drive prep utility (HDToolbox), and the third is FastFileSystem.
Also there's this. I've never used it but have heard it recommended by others:
http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/Format64-m1
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You could always get a 4xIDE adapter which can split the card into multiple 4GB virtual HDs..
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There are 3 issues with drives larger than 4GB. The first is scsi.device, the second is the hard drive prep utility (HDToolbox), and the third is FastFileSystem.
OS3.9 fixes all of these. If you can use 3.9's HDToolbox (which may require you making and then booting from a 3.9 Emergency Floppy), then you can prep the drive and install a filesystem that will allow you to use all 8GB. Your boot partition must be within the first 4GB of the drive, since the 3.1 ROMs need to be able to identify and boot from it in order to load the updated 3.9 modules.
If you're staying on 3.1 it gets a little harder. You need to patch scsi.device and FastFileSystem, and you need a different prep utility - I use HDInstTools in these cases.
Easiest solution? Use a 4GB Flash card instead - no patching required. :) It'll still be a huge upgrade from your 500MB drive.
That's pretty much quick and precise info :) Thanks for it.
Now the questions:
If I use 3.9 emergency disk, I should have HDToolbox on it, so could I use that to prep the CF card with the new FS, but installing 3.1 and CWB? or am I forced to use 3.9?
If I can't; what is the exact sequence to do the operations that you mentioned? From what I understand, I need first to create the first partition where the OS goes, then install 3.1. After that I need to download the new FS, and install it on the 3.1 install that I have; restart and then prep the rest of the drive to use the new FS.
Then in the end I have to erase my initial 3.1 partition, and format it with the new FS? The procedure seems quite involuted, unless I got it wrong :)
I have a 8 GB card, and the idea was to keep all that I need on the card, so I do not have to open and swap CF cards now and then, that's why I went for the 8 Gb, but now it doesn't seems a good idea anymore :)
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There are 3 issues with drives larger than 4GB. The first is scsi.device, the second is the hard drive prep utility (HDToolbox), and the third is FastFileSystem.
OS3.9 fixes all of these. If you can use 3.9's HDToolbox (which may require you making and then booting from a 3.9 Emergency Floppy), then you can prep the drive and install a filesystem that will allow you to use all 8GB. Your boot partition must be within the first 4GB of the drive, since the 3.1 ROMs need to be able to identify and boot from it in order to load the updated 3.9 modules.
If you're staying on 3.1 it gets a little harder. You need to patch scsi.device and FastFileSystem, and you need a different prep utility - I use HDInstTools in these cases.
Easiest solution? Use a 4GB Flash card instead - no patching required. :) It'll still be a huge upgrade from your 500MB drive.
I can related to this... I just used two Transcend 133X 8GB cards in a dual-CF Syba (from Amazon) case.
I have a 512MB DH0: partition on one (bootable), 3.9 fully installed with Boingbag 1, 2, & 3, and a ~7.2GB partition left as DH2: (DH1 was my DLG BBS back in day, so DH2 is habit for me.) The third CF partition, DH3: is 7.7GB, and it's another Transcend card.
Both use FFS. I can verify that if you do early startup, the system can only see DH0. I'm just now getting back into the Amiga scene after not having regularly used one since around 1997 (I used my A1200 in college from 1993-1997), so I still have yet to dig through the startup-sequence and the user-startup. Boing Bag 3 did have me run some fancy setpatch arguments. I did my install under UAE, so I don't even know if it did the right stanza for my A1200.
From the installer for BB 3:
(if (= (exists "DEVS:scsi.device" (noreq)) 0)
(working
(cat "You should add these lines to the start of S:Startup-sequence:\n\n"
"SYS:C/LoadModule L:FastFileSystem L:RAM-Handler L:Shell-Seg LIBS:icon.library LIBS:workbench.library NOREBOOT REVERSE\n\n"
"SYS:C/SetPatch SKIPROMMODULES fs,icon,ram-handler,shell,workbench QUIET\n\n"
"and remove the existing SetPatch line."
))
;else
(working
(cat "You should add these lines to the start of S:Startup-sequence:\n\n"
"SYS:C/LoadModule L:FastFileSystem L:RAM-Handler L:Shell-Seg DEVS:scsi.device LIBS:icon.library LIBS:workbench.library NOREBOOT REVERSE\n\n"
"SYS:C/SetPatch SKIPROMMODULES fs,icon,ram-handler,scsi.device,shell,workbench QUIET\n\n"
"and remove the existing SetPatch line."
)))
So, does anyone know what exactly *enables* the larger file systems in the 3.9 startup-sequence so that the system sees them? Is it one of the setpatch commands, above?
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I can related to this... I just used two Transcend 133X 8GB cards in a dual-CF Syba (from Amazon) case.
I have a 512MB DH0: partition on one (bootable), 3.9 fully installed with Boingbag 1, 2, & 3, and a ~7.2GB partition left as DH2: (DH1 was my DLG BBS back in day, so DH2 is habit for me.) The third CF partition, DH3: is 7.7GB, and it's another Transcend card.
Both use FFS. I can verify that if you do early startup, the system can only see DH0. I'm just now getting back into the Amiga scene after not having regularly used one since around 1997 (I used my A1200 in college from 1993-1997), so I still have yet to dig through the startup-sequence and the user-startup. Boing Bag 3 did have me run some fancy setpatch arguments. I did my install under UAE, so I don't even know if it did the right stanza for my A1200.
From the installer for BB 3:
(if (= (exists "DEVS:scsi.device" (noreq)) 0)
(working
(cat "You should add these lines to the start of S:Startup-sequence:\n\n"
"SYS:C/LoadModule L:FastFileSystem L:RAM-Handler L:Shell-Seg LIBS:icon.library LIBS:workbench.library NOREBOOT REVERSE\n\n"
"SYS:C/SetPatch SKIPROMMODULES fs,icon,ram-handler,shell,workbench QUIET\n\n"
"and remove the existing SetPatch line."
))
;else
(working
(cat "You should add these lines to the start of S:Startup-sequence:\n\n"
"SYS:C/LoadModule L:FastFileSystem L:RAM-Handler L:Shell-Seg DEVS:scsi.device LIBS:icon.library LIBS:workbench.library NOREBOOT REVERSE\n\n"
"SYS:C/SetPatch SKIPROMMODULES fs,icon,ram-handler,scsi.device,shell,workbench QUIET\n\n"
"and remove the existing SetPatch line."
)))
So, does anyone know what exactly *enables* the larger file systems in the 3.9 startup-sequence so that the system sees them? Is it one of the setpatch commands, above?
It's the SCSI.device and FastFileSystem bits that do it.
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use PFS3 aio
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I think that I will go for PFS3 aio; altho I have got the LHA from Aminet, but I don't see any guide about how to install :( Is there a FS for dummies somewhere, that tells me how to prep the card ?
And just to be clear, I do not need any big partition, I just want to use the 8 Gb, so if I have to make 5 partitions of 1.5 Gb and 1 500 mb partition for the OS, I am fine with it :)
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Get the PFS3_53 archive from Aminet and install it. It contains the complete distribution with tools, documentation and everything. Just use PFS3aio when it talks about PFS3 or PFS3ds. You can as well use PFS3ds, aio brings no benefit for you.
Once you have a file system which supports accessing outside the first 4GB of a harddrive, you can make partitions as big or as small as you like. The issue is the position of the partition on the harddrive, not its size.
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Get the PFS3_53 archive from Aminet and install it. It contains the complete distribution with tools, documentation and everything. Just use PFS3aio when it talks about PFS3 or PFS3ds. You can as well use PFS3ds, aio brings no benefit for you.
Once you have a file system which supports accessing outside the first 4GB of a harddrive, you can make partitions as big or as small as you like. The issue is the position of the partition on the harddrive, not its size.
Thanks Thomas, I was wondering why the archive that I have, had just one file inside, nothing else. I will get it tomorrow and give a try.
I also tried SFS, following the guide from Killergorilla; and while it seems to work for the 4 GB format, my 8 GB card won't work as advertised.
The 4 GB card seems fine, but the 8 GB allows me to create only 3 partition with SFS (altho if i create more partition with FFS they appear on the desktop); spent almost 4 hours trying various combination, and the result is always the same.
I guess I can just trash SFS and go for the PFS3...tried them all at this point :)
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SFS does not support harddrives bigger than 4GB without a patch for scsi.device.
The same is true for PFS3 (normal version). Only PFS3ds or PFS3aio do.
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DOH, that would explain why I was getting that weird behavior.
Could you tell me which patch should I get? Thanks!
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Guess time is up....tried to put PFS3on a CF card via real amiga, all OK until I try to install WB 3.1 on it; then I get error messages saying that the drive DH0 is read only, or there are errors in writing.
Will try again next weekend; for now at least I was able to get the 4 GB card with SFS on it...I can play Superfrog and Elite now :)
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For an 8GB card you shouldn't need a patch, just use PFS3ds or PFS3aio.
Note that a patch of scsi.device implies an automatic reboot which almost doubles the boot time.
Depending on how accurate the CF card reports its size, you should make the last partition one cylinder smaller than shown and leave the last cylinder of the card empty. Some cheap CF cards report themselves one block bigger than they actually are. If the file system then checks the accessibility of the last block, it fails with an error message. (PFS3aio checks accessibility, PFS3ds doesn't).
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Very interesting, Thomas. I always use PFS3aio, and use to have problems when using high Pio modes. But my problems use to be on DH0 or DH1, very rare on the last I use, DH2. How do I reduce one cylinder there?. Edit: Well I will take a look.
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I use one partition here on any system, too. These days it makes no sense. Even on a windows system I only need around 30GB to store all applications I need.
Data is stored on network attached storage, so I can simply maintain them and access them from any system I want without transfering the data.
Especially when dealing with flash and with classic hardware, a single partition is a must, as each additional partition eats memory and wasts disc space.
At the end one partition is filled, while the other is mostly empty and the mess begins. Better create one partition, create a data drawer and place it on workbench. Same accessability as with multiple partitions, but you will never ran out of space until the harddrive is filled completley.
Geit
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How do I reduce one cylinder there?
Reduce End Cyl by one.