Yet Another HDD thread

[rvo_nl]

I feel a little embarrassed with Thomas lurking around here, but I seem to have forgotten how I installed my 120Gb HD in my main Amiga. Now I need to install a 2.5 and a 3.5 (both >8GB) in 2 other A1200's, and I have forgotten how!

Right then, silly questions mode activated..

They both have 3.0 kickstart roms, and no IDE-Fix Express or similar. They do recognise the drives well, but the default HDToolbox from WB3.1 doesnt recognise the full size of the drives, naturally.

A) Is there any way to get the default HDToolbox to do so? I've tried running FixHddSize from Thomas, but that didnt work as expected. (I do not wish to go the blizkick or maprom route, I need to keep these machines as fool-proof as possible)

B) In case I stick with the 8Gb that both drives do recognise (Im not sure if FixHddSize helped here, quite possibly it did), can I stick with default FFS and never look back? I mean, can I just partition and format the drives for 8Gb (2x4Gb) using the default HdToolBox?

C) Is there any way to use more than 8Gb without using blizkick/maprom/OS3.9/Ide-Fix Express? Before I didnt even doubt this, but I've seen several threads where it seems it was possible to get the complete size of the drive using a 4Gb boot partition, running Ide-Fix / diskchange and SFS. I have no idea how to do this, all my attempts so far have failed.

I feel like a beginner here, I cant stand not being able to remember how I got my main machine installed, but that one has an IDE-Fix Express and 3.1 roms, and CD-rom (thus OS3.9) so I assume it was easier. It's very frustrating.

[rvo_nl]

Hi Thomas, thanks so much again. You must be getting tired by these questions, but for most people this really is confusing material. But I think you've cleared up a lot of my confusion now. Let me recap:

Like I said, I dont want an extra reboot, so Im going to use HDToolBox to partition my drive with SFS 1.84. I will be stuck with 8Gb this way, which is not too bad anyway.

In case I change my mind, I will use blizkick to patch scsi.device and install the latest SFS on all partitions except the first one, which will probably become a 100Mb FFS boot partition like I did on my other system. At that point I will make use of FixHddSize to get the right numbers into HdToolBox.

All good?

[rvo_nl]

It's quite simple: because people that are not 100% comfortable with what they're doing, tend to go for the safest route. And since Workbench shipped with FFS, that's for many people an indication.
 
 For the machines I'm working on now, I dont care much about fast booting, since they are being build as whdload machines. My main machine has indeed a 3.1 FFS boot partition, but that is really only asking me whether to boot 3.9 or 4.1. After that it is SFS all the way. I've had some bad experiences with PFS3 in the past, so I tend not to go that route.
 
 Anyway, despite your disapproval of FFS, I'm glad I can get started Thanks.

[rvo_nl]

keep the boot partition under 2Gb and make it SFS, its completely reliable and compatible. Also, sfs2.79 is the latest,and sfs2.77 archive has a bunch of useful tools. not sure why you are using 1.84, although it will work ok.

Im still in doubt.. but thanks for your advise. Im using 1.84 because that is the last version that supports hard drive partitioning up to 8Gb without the extra reboot to load a patched scsi.device