Drives in HDToolBox not detected full size (CHS settings?)

[LoadWB]

I am attempting to install a couple of different SSDs into my 4000D.  These are KingSpec IDE SSDs, one 64GB and one 128GB, which work just fine in other machines, as well as with USB-to-IDE adapters.

When installing in HDToolBox they do not show full capacity.  They are initially seen as their proper capacity in the selection window (minus over-head,) but upon installation the 64GB shows up as 18GB, the 128GB shows as 22GB.

Any advice on adjusting the CHS values to match the proper capacity?  Would bad values cause problems in use after partitioning, formatting, and OS installation?

[LoadWB]

What version of scsi.device are you using?  I'm using a 128 GB IDE SSD (Super Talent) on my A4000T and it sees the full capacity.   I am using scsi.device 43.45 though which helps with larger drives.

http://aminet.net/package/driver/media/SCSI4345p

scsi.device 43.45

[LoadWB]

Yeah, part of my problem, as well, is going to be remembering all the cool things I installed on my CSMKIII SCSI system.  I will probably wind up doing a IDE-SATA adapter with a SATA SSD, but I was hoping to use the smaller IDE SSDs I have (I have a 32GB which would be more than plenty.)

BUT, it seems something may be squirrely about these IDE SSDs.  I am hoping that is not the case that it is simply something I am doing.

[LoadWB]

I have a question for you about this?, did you first try to set up each section of the disk to 2Gb for each section of the hard drive?. It may work. Just try it and put every thing down on paper as your notes?.

I am not certain what you mean by "section of the hard drive."  I can partition the drives fine.  The default creates many 8GB partitions, the first of which I size to 2GB to avoid any potential problems.  The problem I am having is the size of the disk itself during installation is not showing the size as detected.  I will try to get a screen grab to show.

[LoadWB]

Ah, that is a good question which I punch myself for leaving out.  I am using HDToolBox provided by a 3.9 Emergency Boot disk set.  I am pretty certain this is a non-BB CD but I will get the version output of HDToolBox when I get back to the 4000 later this morning.  I had originally tried using the 3.1 installation disks but v39 refused to acknowledge a device was present at all.

I actually have not proceeded with the default detection, yet.  My concern was the ridiculous difference between the size of the device and what HDToolBox said was its capacity.  I certainly do not want to only be able to use 20GB of a 128GB drive, even if I will never have that much stuff on this computer

[LoadWB]

I just recalled that there may be another punch line here: the drive may report its size differently with respect to how it is asked.

The ATA scsi.device may receive an answer fit for a disk controller as present in an early 2000's PC. Back then the size of a sector was 512 bytes, and this is no longer the case with today's SSDs. Also, the number of sectors per track, etc. was much lower than what we use today.

Hence, the SSD may report its properties skewed towards "compatibility".

hrmmmmm maybe setting the sector size to 4096?

Yes, and with larger disks comes the unavoidable disk errors, bit-flips and so on, that needs to be handled somehow. And TRIM, UNMAP functionality for SSDs... soon enough drives will be replaced completely by various NVM solutions etc, interesting time ahead

TRIM support for modern SSDs would be nice.  In the beginning I recall some SSDs had what was essentially auto-TRIM to support OSes and filesystems which did not support TRIM, and I suspect that IDE SSDs, with their target being older systems, do as well.

[LoadWB]

Per my post in another thread, I am deliberately not using WinUAE for this project.  I have never used it, anyway, so I would have to work that up, too.  My intention is to be able to use the native tools to achieve my goals, illustrating short-falls and solutions as I go.  It's a challenge, and I'm already "cheating" by using a 3.9 boot set

[LoadWB]

Okay, I attached what I'm seeing with the 128GB SSD and what happens if I accept the default parameters.  If I change the block size to 4096 it only comes up to 88GB.

EDIT: If I set cylinders to 65536 and blocks per cylinder to 4096 I get 128GB exactly, but that is more than the detected size of the device.

[LoadWB]

Either way, the number in detection does not match the number in installation, and I would like to think the program is consistent.

[LoadWB]

It is. Find out the true total number of blocks and increase the number of cylinders until the displayed number of blocks matches the true one as close as possible. In order to keep the number of cylinders small I would also change the number of heads to 16 so that you get 4096 blocks per cylinder.

You can use this program to find out the true total number of blocks: http://thomas-rapp.homepage.t-online.de/downloads/hddreport.lha

Nice.  And the work begins.

[LoadWB]

Your photo looks like SCSI.device is 43.35 and not the latest patched 43.45

Yeah... something got screwy there.  I'm going to have to try again.

30333 cylinders * 16 heads * 256 sectors = 124243968 sectors

Matches exactly, no wasted sectors at the end. And partitions aligned to 2-megabyte boundaries should meet all alignment requirements.

What's the blocks-per-track setting need to be?  I found some parameters change spontaneously as I'm entering.  Eh.  I'm done for the year.  Going home, leaving this at the office and I'll be back on Tuesday.  Going home to my working CSMKIII SCSI system  Thanks for the help, I'll get back on it after New Year.

[LoadWB]

"heads" = tracks per cylinder
"sectors" = sectors per track
sectors per cylinder = heads * sectors

So:

Cylinders = 330333
Heads = 16
Sectors per Track = 256
Sectors per Cylinder = 4096

*forehead slap* Oh, duh.  I tried a little bit different values and am having problems.  My 3.9 installation is missing some stuff, and the 3.1 installation said (never did before) that my 2GB partition didn't have enough room for Fonts.  I'll try again Tuesday.

For what it's worth, and for those using OS 4 on any of their machines, the boot floppy has a version of scsi.device that is >52. I use this on all my classic machines.

Version >NIL: scsi.device 52
If Warn
  LoadResident DEVS:A1200/scsi.device reboot quiet
EndIf

Suddenly, the second channel on the internal IDE adapter and other nice little benefits are usable on the system.

Yeah, I completely forgot that I had done some customization to my boot floppy but then re-made it.  I had the patched scsi.device on there, but now I am curious about the OS4.1 scsi.device, and particularly surprised it is 68k. But then I guess the system has to boot 68k then hand over to PPC, right?

I'm assuming one of the benefits is less confusing size issues, but what others?

[LoadWB]

Right, right, I was not thinking problems with HDToolBox, but that it would support TD64 as well as NSD (but then again, isn't NSD the preferred one over TD64?) and wasn't detecting larger drives a problem with scsi.device.  Not seeing the calculated sizes properly, but just seeing the drives period.

In any case, my partition was 1.8GB (supposedly) and the installation reported not enough space for Fonts, and after the 3.9 upgrade, in particular, resource.library is missing.  Some functionality is broken, as well, but I was in too much of a hurry to really remember which -- my thought was, the installation was broken to begin with as evidenced by the Fonts problem.

I have to re-install the drive with proper geometry, anyway, so everything on it is a lost cause.

But I'm not going to have it in-hand again until Tuesday.  I *may*, however, work with my CSMKIII system with a SCSI-to-IDE/IDE-to-SATA adapter to install an SSD in that.  Maybe.  Have to upgrade my Core2Quad to a Gen7-i7 this weekend, too.  So much to do, so little time.

[LoadWB]

The scsi.device v52 seems to sort out a lot of the wonkiness I needed other tools for and it is loaded resident. So imho it's a win-win. Your mileage may vary but so far it has treated me well

Worth the purchase, then.  I have been debating and convinced myself out of buying OS4.1 until I actually get a PPC accelerator.  This gives more support to the side of "buy now."

[LoadWB]

Today was taken up by a dead server and its replacement and errands before I left town... and I have, so I will get back to this in a couple of weekends.