Format A4000 HD (40 Gig)

[Thomas]

Well, your description lacks most of the needed information, i.e. a step-by-step guide what you did with which version of which program and at which step you got the error message and which program issued it.

Nevertheless I'll try to tell you the steps to install a HDD:

1. write down the drive geometry specified on the hdd label (heads, sectors and cylinders).

1a. the multiplication of heads * sectors * cylinders * 512 should give the drive size in bytes (i.e. ca. 40 billions). If it is much less (e.g. 8 billions) and the number of cylinders is one less than a power of two (e.g. 16384), this is a fake for old PC BIOSes. In this case you have to visit the manufacturer's homepage and get the real drive geometry.

2. connect the drive to whatever controller you want to use it with.

3. boot your Amiga from floppy disk. Use either the OS3.0 Install disk or the OS3.9 emergency boot disk. The latter should load the CD-ROM driver and boot OS3.9 from CD.

4. run HDToolbox

5. choose your HDD and go to "Install drive".

5a. with the 3.0 version of HDToolbox you now have to define a new drive type.

6. click on "Read Configuration". Check that the configuration matches the one of step 1 and check that the drive size (cylinders * blocks per cylinder * 512) matches your expectatons.

6a. if the geometry does not match, correct it manually. The value of "blocks per cylinder" is just the multiplication of heads * sectors. It should be ca. 1000 for OS3.0 or 2000 for OS3.9. And blocks is the same as sectors.

7. click on save

8. return to the main menu and choose "Partition drive"

9. create one small partition in the beginning of the HDD. Small means less then 1GB. You don't need more for the boot drive. It *must* be smaller than 4GB.

9a. make the partition bootable. In the 3.0 HDToolbox you have to activate "advance options" for that.

10. click on Save to return to the main menu. With the 3.0 version of HDToolbox you also have to click on "Save changes to drive".

11. exit HDToolbox and reboot from floppy again. Not format the partition.

12. now you can install AmigaOS on the empty partition.

You may also add some more partitions. With AmigaOS 3.0 you must not use more than the first 4GB of the drive. With AmigaOS 3.9 you can use the entire drive.

On any partition past the 4GB border you have to use "Quick" format.

To check if your setup is correct for large HDDs you can use the CheckHD program which is in the Check4GB archive on Aminet.

Bye,
Thomas

[Thomas]

Number # 1./#1A I'm pretty sure that HDToolbox did recognize the new HDD with the correct settings.

Using HDToolbox 3.0 (from floppy) when I try to SAVE (Partition) it says, "Not enough space" this is my dilemma...

Well, some drives report themselves with blocks per cylinders = 1 and number of cylinders = total number of blocks on the drive. As HDToolbox always uses the first two cylinders for the partition table, with this configuration there are only 1024 bytes (two blocks) for it which is far too few.

So you should manually adjust the geometry so that a cylinder has about 1000 or 2000 blocks. Then there should be enough space to save the partition table.

You may also try to reduce the number of cylinders so that the drive actually has only 4GB. Then it should be fully usable on OS3.0. After you upgraded to OS 3.9 you can increase the number of cylinders to reflect the real capacity of the drive. Don't touch any other value but the number of cylinders, or your data will be lost.

Sorry, cannot help you with the floppy problem. Perhaps your floppies are damaged (a virus perhaps) ? Don't you have any other disk (HDD, ZIP, JAZ etc.) which boots up the Amiga ?

Bye,
Thomas