Large SCSI HD's under OS 3.9

[marcfrick2112]

Hi, I need to get enough storage to back up my HD (lousy 8.5 GB) I am running an A1200T (PowerTower) '060/50MHz, 2MB C, 128MB F, OS 3.9 w/BB2. Can I use very large SCSI HD without problems? e.g. 36GB? Do I have to format several partitions, or could I just format it as e.g. 36 GB? I assume 'hdwrench.library' will take care of things...but, I see weird things with my current 2.1 GB SCSI HD with DirOpus..No disk usage displayed for example. Hoping that large SCSI HD's won't cause probs.
Any Help would be great!  :-D

[marcfrick2112]

Hi, for now I am only going to use the 36 GB for backup, and some extra for Aminet DL's, etc. I am worried about SFS and/or PFS...I am a little scared to mess with my filesystem, can't afford to have any data loss right now  :crazy: What would I have to do for SFS or PFS??
I don't generally like to mess with filesystems, etc. unless it's absoulutly necessary. I am on my 3rd Amiga system... With no money around, I just need to backup my sys. in case of trouble.
Maybe someday I'll have a 36GB SCSI HD as my boot drive  :-D

Out of curiousity, is there any limit to the size of a SCSI HD partition under OS3.9?? I know that the OS has to be within the   lowest 2GB.... but could I use a 320 GB SCSI drive? Would I have any problems besides (the lame) DirOpus??
Thanks for your help!

[marcfrick2112]

And you are still using FFS? SFS for instance is much more stable and reliabel than FFS, and it's free as well.

Ok, point taken, I have had trouble with FFS DirCache, but straight FFS partitions have served me well for years....

I believe you can. I'm only using a 160 GB drive here though. The partition size depends on the filesystem IIRC, and for SFS I think it is 2 TB.

 :crazy: Wow 2 TB, huh? That's impressive. One last dumb question, can the filesystems be mixed? (i.e. FFS for my IDE HD and SFS for my SCSI? I ask 'cause at this time I don't have space to backup all my IDE HD. I would like to make the change from FFS to SFS in 'baby-steps', if you know what I mean....have had too much hardware trouble on my Amiga's. I am trying to get a Jaz drive or similar, backup everything, then I can go for broke with SFS, or whatever  :-) I could even boot from the Jaz, If I had too... ( I love the 1230 SCSI module!) Thanks much!!

[marcfrick2112]

doctorq wrote:

One last dumb question, can the filesystems be mixed? (i.e. FFS for my IDE HD and SFS for my SCSI?

Yes, no problems with that.

When changing from one filesystem to another, just do it one partition at a time. It involves a lot of copying data from one partition to another and back again, but it can be done quite easily.

Oh, btw, SFS allows long filenames as well; FFS don't. Another reason for switching.[/quote]

Oh Boy, I think you lost me there...  Do I copy a partition over, re-format it as SFS, and then copy it back? Will I have any problems with my lowly DirOpus 4.1 ? Grr, I really don't like doing this type of thing.... For example, can I access both the SFS and FFS partitions at the same time, to make sure everything worked OK? (i.e. in DirOpus)
Finally, I assume that SFS is on Aminet? Sorry if these are dumb questions, just don't like to mess with the 'inner workings' of Amiga's .... :-?

[marcfrick2112]

Wow, thanks Thomas, for the very detailed instructions!

t's a little bit tricky to change the boot partition, because you have to have another drive to boot from while the boot partition appears to be unformatted. E.g. the OS3.9 emergency disk, the OS3.1 install disk or another bootable partition on the HDD.

Hmm, I am glad that I made one other partition bootable when I set up my A1200 PowerTower...(was because of installing OS3.5.. I got scared!) glad that the 1230 SCSI can boot off of anything, it gives me an option as well...
A question: Is there an 'Undelete' util. for SFS?

As I said earlier, I have to wait until I have a viable backup otion for my sys. , preferably a Jaz drive or equivalent. I just can't afford to screw this up, if something goes wrong, I don't have the money to fix it  :-o

Thanks again, everyone...