SCSI HDD - SYS PARTITION FULL

[Thomas]

3. Any other ideas?

I am quite sure that with this large amount of free space it should be possible to repartition without the need of additional space. But this method is an adventure rather than a secure procedure. It implied to create a partition inside the area of another partition with the potential risk of complete data loss. Also it needs some knowledge of the internal file system structures and probably some programming.

So if you love your data, you should back it up first. And once you have a backup, you don't need the adventurous method any more.

Nevertheless how it could work:

- get MakeMountList from Aminet, create a mount list for the HD1 partition and store it on the HD0 partition.
- examine the bitmap of the HD1 partition to find about 200 MB of contignous free space.
- use HDToolbox to delete the HD1 partition and create a new HD2 partition which covers only the free space discovered before. Make it bootable with a boot priority lower than that of HD0 (probably -1).
- reboot and quick-format the new HD2 partition.
- mount the old HD1 partition using the mount list created before.
- copy all files from HD0 to HD2. Copy all files from HD1 into a (new) directory on HD2.
- use HDToolbox to delete HD0. Make a new HD0 which is about 200 MB. Do not yet make it bootable. Or make it bootable and use the Early-Startup-Menu to boot from HD2.
- reboot (from HD2) and quick-format the new HD0.
- copy all files from HD2 to HD0.
- use HDToolbox to delete HD2 and create a new HD1.
- for future use you should divide the 800 MB remaining space into HD1 and HD2, both 400 MB.
- don't forget to make HD0 bootable if it isn't yet.
- reboot, quick-format HD1 and HD2 and copy the files from the HD1-backup directory to the new HD1 partition.

Step 2 is tricky. :-D

Bye,
Thomas

[Thomas]

I installed a 10G Fujitsu IDE drive already prepped into 2 4G partitions

At this point everything was looking good I had two new icons FDH0 and FDH1 as well as the old SYS and WORK. I did a warm restart (CTRL+AA) and agian everything looked fine so I THEN COPIED THE CONTENTS OF SYS TO FDH0 AND WORK TO FDH1 still not making FDH0 bootable. I then powered the system off and on ..... I had now "lost" my FDH0 and FDH1 icons I only had my original SYS and WORK icons.

That's the normal way how the 4GB problem shows up.
Make one 500 MB partition and two 1700 MB partitions and leave the rest empty, then you are fine.

Why two 1700 and not one 3400 ? Because values bigger than 2GB will show as negative numbers and give annoying problems. You are upgrading from one 1000 MB HDD, so 1700 MB for one partition should be plenty.

And why 3400 and not 3500 ? Because 4000 MB (500 + 3500) might still be too close to 4GB. Values shown in HDToolbox might be rounded down.

Bye,
Thomas

[Thomas]

if I power off I "lose" the above icons and and devices unless I re-enter HDToolbox and effect some change to the IDE disk.

Are you sure you need to change something ? Doesn't a warm reboot (Ctrl-A-A) activate the IDE drive ?

If it does, this is a common problem with IDE drives and Kickstart 3.0: the drive spins up too slow to be recognised at once.

Bye,
Thomas

[Thomas]

Anyone know if there is a workaround of the "slow IDE problem" with 3.0 roms?

I think there is no workaround which makes the IDE drive available immediately after power-on. But if you keep the SCSI drive and keep it bootable, you can add something like this to the beginning of the startup-sequence on HD0:

Code: [Select]


assign >nil: exists FDH0:
if warn
  reboot
endif


You need the Reboot program which is in the C directory of the Install disk. Copy it to c: of HD0.

Alternatively, if you install software which makes the upper 6 GB of the 10 GB HDD available (for example IDE-fix a.k.a. IDE-max), it will imply a rescan of the IDE bus, so the problem will disappear by itself (given that you still boot from the SCSI drive first).

Bye,
Thomas

[Thomas]

Miami should be compatible to AmiTCP.