HDD problems?

[PMC]

@Richter

Have you tried plugging the drive in to a PC or something to see if the drive is recognised?

I'm thinking it might be a cabling problem, fudging the communication between the Amiga's IDE interface and the drive.

[PMC]

@BoingBoss

Hmm, I think Richter is using a 3.5" hdd already and my guess is there's an issue with cabling (a 2.5" to 3.5" IDE adaptor cable) from the Amiga to the drive.

I've used Western Digital drives in the past with my system and had no problems whatsoever, the same is true of Fujitsu drives too.

Back to O/T.

@Richter

Did you purchase the cable with the drive, separately or did you make it yourself?

[PMC]

Richter wrote:
Can it be of any importance what's on the drive now? I believe it's an NTFS-partition on it... I still believe HDTools would "see" the drive and be able to low-level format right?

@Richter,

At least you're up and running power wise and you can use your system now.  Okay, next step.

The 2.5" IDE interface on the A1200 supplies power for a 2.5" drive to run without having to connect any additional leads (just like in any generic laptop).  If you get the cable the wrong way around then +5v is going to be fed into the wrong pin somewhere.

You report the drive works perfectly okay in a PC?  If so we've narrowed the problem down slightly.  

You should see the drive showing in your HDTools menu as a SCSI device as the firmware on the drive will display the manufacturer information.

The link between the drive and the Amiga is the IDE cable and IDE interface.  If a PC recognises the drive then one of these has to be playing up.  

Oh, and one last thing.  Whatever you do, don't run a low level format of the drive.  You'll kill it!

[PMC]

@Richter,

Regardless of whether the drive was fitted to a PC or whatever before, your Amiga should detect the drive in the early startup screen or when using the HDToolBox utility.

The drive's manufacturer etc is stored on some firmware on the drive that isn't related to the RDB (Rigid Disk Block).  

The fact that you've unsucessfully tested two other drives reveals one of two culprits...

Either the IDE interface is blown or your cable is knackered.

If it's the former then it means a new Motherboard or the purchase of a Powerflyer interface which circumnavigates the A1200's IDE socket.  If it's the latter then I'd either check the Aminet for schematic of a 2.5" to 3.5" cable or purchase one from Vesalia, Power Computing or Eyetech.

[PMC]

@Richter

Well fingers crossed here dude.

Do let usknow how you get on, hopefully you'll be up and running in no time.

BTW, you sound like you've loads of Amiga kit there...  Keep up the good work!