2.5" harddisk question

[McVenco]

I'm currently looking for a harddisk to use in my A1200. Is there any specific thing I must look at or will any regular 2.5" drive work?

For instance: I can buy a Hitachi DK227A-50 very cheap, but will it work? According to the Hitachi website it has a IDE/ATA-3(UDMA) interface.

[McVenco]

Well, I have bought the Hitachi drive, and HDToolBox does see it correctly. I have made 2 partitions with it, one of 1GB, the other 3GB (plus something). I've only done this to test the drive. I currently have 3.0 roms and WB 3.0 disks (with a faulty install disk), but the 3.1 roms I bought at Vesalia should arrive this week.

I'm thinking of installing OS 3.9, can I install this without problems, or do I need the 3.1 disks for it?

Furthermore: what is the best filesystem to use if I want to install 3.9? I know that there are better ones than the 3.0/3.1 standard FFS, but which ones are there?


EDIT: I also own a copy of Amiga Forever 2005. Is there some way to copy Workbench 3.1 from there or is this not possible/allowed?

[McVenco]

CLS2086 wrote:
You can also do a softkick of the k3.1

That seems a bit redundant, as the 3.1 roms will arrive (probably) tomorrow :-)

[McVenco]

EDIT: double post. Sorry...

[McVenco]

I'm thinking of installing OS 3.9, can I install this without problems, or do I need the 3.1 disks for it?

Furthermore: what is the best filesystem to use if I want to install 3.9? I know that there are better ones than the 3.0/3.1 standard FFS, but which ones are there?

:bump:

Anyone?

[McVenco]

Thomas wrote:
You cannot use 3.0/3.1 FFS for a HDD bigger than 4GB. You have to use 3.5/3.9 FFS. Or SFS. There is also PFS3 but it does not work with OS3.9 if IDEfix is not installed, too.

Is there any difference in those filesystems? I'll be using a Blizzard PPC/68040 with enough RAM, so I'd like to have a file system which is pretty fast. Or would the A1200's own IDE controller be a bottleneck in speed?

[McVenco]

You can use Blizkick with SpeedyIDE to speed up the IDE a bit I guess.

I've seen the Blizkick .readme on Aminet, but I'm still not quite sure what it exactly does. Any light on that?

Also you don't really need a CD-ROM to install OS3.9. You could also copy the cd contents to you harddisk and assign AmigaOS3.9: to the folder you copied the files to.

Since I have an Archos Overdrive CD-ROM, that is not a problem :-D

[McVenco]

My Amiga knowledge seems to be even more rusty than I already expected.... I've downloaded HDInstTools and SFS, but now I don't know how to format my HD with SFS. I can partition my drive, but how do I select SFS to be the filesystem of choice?

[McVenco]

No seriously in the SFS docs is a really easy to follow step by step guide.

Then I really need better glasses. Or a bigger monitor.

Anyway, I'll look again :oops: (shoots himself)

[McVenco]

I *think* I have it properly installed now. Used HDInstTools to put SFS into the RDB and partition the drive. According to the SFS docs a Quick Format should be enough and I must say that everything seems to work. However, since I used the standard WB format it seems to be formatted with FFS. I tried to use SFSformat, but it gave an error "error while initializing the drive: packet request unknown"

I tried to partition the drive with HDToolBox and formatted with FFS but then only the last formatted partition works. If I format only DH0: that will be readable, but if I format DH1: after that DH0: becomes corrupt.

Can anyone shed any light in this perhaps?

[McVenco]

Thomas wrote:
you have to use an updated scsi.device

Where is that to be found? I searched Aminet, but I only found updates for use with turboboards (030+), and I have none at the moment.