CF-IDE HDD on A1200 - only 2 (out of 4) partitions visible!

[MozzerFan]

Try to partition/format it with HDInstTool.

If that doesn't work try to partition/format it under WinUAE.

BTW IIRC Directory Caching should only be used with floppy disks. Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong.

[MozzerFan]

How many buffers are you using on your CF partitions?
You can try to increase the value to 100 buffers and see if it makes a difference.
If possible, check how many buffers your HD partitions were using, and use the same value for your CF.
Don't set them too high, or else it uses up your RAM.

You can try a max transfer setting of *edit:* 0x0001FE00 Report back if you have data corruption when you copy large files.

With the *edit* filesystems button of HDintsTool you can check if fastfilesystem is in the RDB.

[MozzerFan]

First of all, max transfer settings is a size. It has nothing to do with transfer speeds. It limits how much data can be transferred to or from the hard drive at one time.

The max transfer you suggest is lower than that - is your's a better value?

I don't know if it's better. It works for me. It's the default value that hdtoolbox from amigaforever uses when partitioning a harddrive.

As for the speed of the CF. It could also be the CF-IDE adapter. There was a guy here at amiga.org who had a cheap CF-IDE adapter. He also got lower speeds than others.
Or maybe the problem is the CF card. If possible, try to test it with other CF-cards.

As for directory-cache: I always understood that it was not necessary to use that option for harddrives. Floppy drives are really slow, so caching directories can really speed up things.

[MozzerFan]

I made a mistake in my previous post concerning the max transfer size. I use 0x0001FE00. It's the default value of HDToolBox from Amigaforever. I corrected it in my previous post.
But like I said, entering a higher value doesn't boost the transfer speed of the drive. It's just that some harddrives have a limit of how much data they can move at one time. If the maxtransfer size is set too high, this can result in corrupted data when copying large files.

I don't know if your cf-ide adapter really is to blame.
Right now, I have a CF-IDE adapter in both my A600 and a4000, but it wouldn't be fair to compare your transfer speed to the transfer speed of those systems, because in my a4000 the adapter is connected to my cyberscsi, and my a600 only has a chipmem expansion and no fastram or accelerator.

[MozzerFan]

BTW What is the blocksize you are using on your CF?
You could try a blocksize of 512. Also try to see if changing the buffers from 30 to 100 changes things.

[MozzerFan]

I put on my eye-glasses again and read that SFS was boosting your performance.

but I'm a bit reluctant to use SFS, since it has a bit of a reputation for REALLY buggering-up partitions if you're not careful!

I'm using sfs since many years. I got sick and tired of my harddisk partitions validating when my system had crashed during a writing process.
I must say I never looked back since.
SFS never failed me. If my system crashes there are no more long validation processes and it's faster than FFS.
Since installing SFS, no partition ever got messed up, and if one ever does, there's always SFSSalv (if for some reason I forgot to make a backup).

[MozzerFan]

With regards to SFS, I've never had much luck, although I'm using it now on the CF card. I was getting random lock-ups of the system and the SFS format command seems to crash quite a lot... Maybe it's just me?

When I use the SFSFormat command, it just asks me to press enter, but when the format is finished, it never says so.
I notice it's finished, because the volumelabel of my disk-icon changes and the harddisk-led stops.

 

I'd be interested if you could post some timings for you CF card setups

On my a4000/060 with cyberscsi and scsi-ide adapter I get ~7.5 MB/s. I have devided the Sandisk Ultra II 4GB CF in 4 partitions and on the last one I get ~8 MB/s.
When I had a harddisk in it, I got ~5.7 - 6 MB/s.

I can't use SFS on my A600, because it needs a 020 processor or higher. I use FFS on my A600 and get speeds way under 1 MB/s. But like I said, it only has a 68000 processor and no fastram. I also use a fairly old Toshiba 128 MB CF card.

Also, what type of CF-IDE adaptor are you using?

I'm using this one:


I bought it at Conrad.com. It's rather expensive (though shipping was free), probably much more than I should have paid for a CF-IDE, but I wanted to play it safe. Some users who bought one via Ebay had problems with the Led not working or other problems. Soldering is not one of my skills.