SFS for hard drives larger then 4 gig. How to install?

[Piru]

Forgot to tick 'Mount' for the partitions?

Forgot to quickformat the partitions?

Using conflicting devicenames for the partitions? (There can be only one DH0 for example. I often prefix the devicenames on different disks with Q, Z or S for example)

[Piru]

Don't ever use regular format for partitions crossing or above the 4GB limit or you will destroy the RDB of the disk.

You must use quickformat, always.

If you already did it, the partitions will be gone after reboot.

[Piru]

@tonyvdb

This has nothing to do with size.

The location of the partition matters. If it resides even partially over the 4GB limit, regular format will trash the RDB and you lose all partitions.

[Piru]

Does this mean that the partitions above the 4 gig size are not going to be as stable/relyable?

Not at all.

But many applications are not able to access them. For example:

- Format
- ShapeShifter
- DiskSalv
- QuarterBack tools
- many older disk repair tools, editors etc

However, since many of these tools work only on FFS anyway, it doesn't matter much.

Obviously anything writing the disk directly (bypassing the filesystem) will be dangerous, since if the application doesn't handle >4GB correctly it will "wrap back" and trash the RDB and/or the partitions below 4GB. This is the reason why you should never use the regular (non-quick) format.

[Piru]

@amije

Naturally it depends on your Format command version and the standards supported by the device driver. But even so, there are actually *three* different standards to access disk above the 4GB limit, and even the AmigaOS 3.9 Format only supports one of these methods.

So, in short, due to all this uncertainty, it's much better to assume that the format is not safe.

Full format is waste of time anyway.

[Piru]

@amije

If the format goes bad it goes bad right away (that is the RDB is lost on next reboot, first partition(s) get corrupted). There is no delayed effect other than that.

There is no need to reformat. If you had experienced the problem you would have lost all your partitions already.