Amiga 4000 Power Tower

[Thomas]

First of all you actually *can* set up the large HDDs with OS3.1. It is not true that HDToolbox does not see the drives. Only the reported capacity is wrong (usually negative). But this does not matter. If you feel uncomfortable with this you can reduce the number of cylinders until the capacity is below 4GB. Then create a partition and install 3.9 on it. After that use the new HDToolbox to correct the number of cylinders (do not touch the other values or the partition will be gone).

For the file transfer I suggest to archive the long file names with LhA or Zip. The archives can be stored with short file names on floppies and when unarchived on the Amiga, the long file names are restored.

Finally some criticism: why didn't you try to repair your boot partition ? Why do you have only one boot partition ? Why didn't you keep the emergency disk you created during OS3.9 installation ?

Bye,
Thomas

[Thomas]

Installing software was a problem; since the computer thought the hardrive was full but it was not!

Stay below 4GB. Everything above is problematic and always will be.

I'm the poster child for people who do not back up hard drives. I think i have learned the hard way.

Oh, I do not backup either. From time to time I write the most important things (program sources, key files  etc.) to CD-R, but I have no backup of the entire system.

IMHO it is not needed. This is why I asked why you didn't try to repair your boot partition. There are several tools to do that out there. Even one written by me.

Also, when you are up and going again, you should create a backup of your boot drive. Just do a

lha -e -r -a -x a backup:workbench sys:#?

to another partition. It's not too difficult.

Bye,
Thomas