File system to support 8 Gb Flash card?

[superfrog76]

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!

[superfrog76]

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!

[superfrog76]

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

[superfrog76]

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

[superfrog76]

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

[superfrog76]

DOH, that would explain why I was getting that weird behavior.

Could you tell me which patch should I get? Thanks!

[superfrog76]

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