Smart File System issues

[Franko]

I've been helping out quite a number of folk here recently to set up SFS on their HDs...

First thing I'd say is dump OS3.9 it far too bloated and a pain in the butt to install properly, OS3.5 is much better and gives you 90% of what OS3.9 can do without eating up all your precious ram...

Anyway back to SFS I don't know about setting it up on one of those horrible wee CF things (much better with a proper HD IMHO) but when using SFS I recommend your boot partition should stay with FFS and all your other partitions can then easily be made SFS...

It's best to make sure you install FFS & SFS on the disks RDB as this sets it up from the Amigas initial bootstrap, if you don't do this and you only have SFS sitting in your L: drawer then of course the Amiga can't boot from it as it would need to boot up first then load SFS from the L: drawer...

To install SFS on the RDB you need to use HDinstalltools or HDtoolbox (depending on which versions you have)...

As I say unless you install SFS on the disks RDB you wont be able to boot from them...

[Franko]

I'll consider OS 3.5 then.

As for the RDB, SFS has been installed in that as mentioned above. Per the instructions I put the SFS file in L: then loaded it into the Hard Drive via HDTools, now the drives do not show up at all.

Also, how will my 1200 see my Hard Drive if it is 8Gb and in FFS?

Despite what others may say, it's always best to keep you boot partition in the first 4GB of any HD as it can cause all sort of problems as your discovering.

It all depends on your hardware and which OS and filesystem you're using. As you appear to be using an 8GB compact flash your best bet would be to split it into two 4GB Partitions, as the Amiga without something like the FastATA MKII interface cannot cope with a boot partition that goes beyond the 4GB barrier.

While the above is not strictly true (their are ways around it) it gets quite complicated and messy trying to explain this to someone...

FFS system partitions should never go beyond the 2GB size on an Amiga again it gets a bit complicated explaining why but it's simply best not to unless you have a buffered interface board fitted that takes care of most of these problems for you...

Personally if I were using an 8GB compact Flash drive I would set it up this way...
First Partition = 2GB FFS (for WorkBench)
Second Partion = 6GB SFS/2 for data & storage

or any combination you wish just as long as your Boot Partition the first one on the HD in FFS and keep it at 2GB or under and whatever combination of FFS or SFS and sizes you prefer for the remaining space...

It'll save a lot of headaches in the long run...

[Franko]

That's the thing, even though my drive is 8Gb, I all partitions are below 2G, in fact DH0 is only 500Mb. Regardless if I format DH0 as Fast File System as opposed to SFS, it still will NOT show up on a real Amiga, only UAE will see it.

As for OS 3.9, I never have these issues, but I'm loosing favor with 3.9 quick.

I am interested in buying a copy of 3.5, but for the moment, I'd really love to see 3.1 supporting my 8Gb drive, and I'd love if either UAE or my real Amiga could actually see the SFS partitions I've been creating (according to the sfs docs).

Hmmm... a lot of folk seem to be having difficulty in setting up SFS, I'm not very good at trying to explain these things but stick me in front of an Amiga and I'd have it set up in five minutes... (not much good here though...

Have you made sure you've installed SFS on the HDs RDB (and also placed SmartFileSystem in the L: drawer) obvious questions I know but some folk tend to miss these things...

Also remember once you partitioned your drive with SFS you need to reboot then format each SFS partition not with the Workbench/CLI Format command but with the SFSformat command that comes with SFS, otherwise nothing will show up...

Out of interest which version of SFS are you using...

(SFS is supposed to be able to work on any version of OS3.x ...

[Franko]

From the number of PMs I've received and from the amount of threads/questions here a lot of folk seem to be having trouble setting up their HDs to use SmartFileSystem...

It's kinda tricky tying to explain to folk over the net just how to do this so I've uploaded to my site an example of a 200GB HDs RDB block (sorry but 200GBs is he smallest drive I have) and a rewritten version of ReadRDB (it can now cope with large RDB files)...

So if you own a 200GB HD or are just looking to see if you can figure out how to install SFS then feel free to download these and study or try them out for yourself...

You may even be able to write this RDB file to any size of HD and modify it yourself to suit your own HDs size with HDtoolbox or HDInstTools...

There is also a small doc file in which I've tried to explain the best way to do this and how to use ReadRDB (a small utill that reads & write an HDs RDB as a file)...

Be warned though writing to your HDs RDB will destroy any data you have on your HD, only perform this on a disk that your trying to set up to use SFS and have no important data stored on it...

Some help with installing SFS

[Franko]

I've found after much testing and benchmarking with SFS on my A1200 set up
the best value for MaxTransfer to be...

00x00FFFE00 (decimal = 16,776,704) or 16Mb

Works for me...

[Franko]

Maxtransfer has nothing to do with file systems so the fact you are using SFS is irrelevant. It is 100% to do with the medium you are storing to and the device drivers you are using. Nothing more.

A value of 0xFFFE00 is very unusual.

For that to work with an Amiga (A600/A1200/A4000) IDE interface with a disk or CF card both the device and the driver must support a command set known as ATA-6. In that command set they introduced 16-bit sector count. I very much doubt that scsi.device for amiga IDE supports 16-bit sector counts! I'm pretty sure that is why data corruption occurs.

If it did then you may as well use ((2^16)-1*512) = 0x1FFFE00 if you felt like it.

You sure you're using Amiga native IDE & a CF card?

If you are using a SCSI interface then it is a whole different ball game!

Yup 100% sure... It's the FastATA MKIII interface on an A1200 with BLizzard60/PPC @ 60Mhz/240Mhz for both IDE HDs and IDE/ATAPI DVD burners... all under OS3.5

As I say I tested many values and did many benchmark tests and the value I give produced the best results...

(I never use SCSI or CF drives only IDE or SATA via an adapter)

[Franko]

Exactly what is more bloated in 3.9 than in 3.5? From my POV, 3.9 is more or less just a bug fixed 3.5, and the only really bloat to speak of compared to 3.1 is Reaction and icons.

Without getting in technical details take a look a the amount of data on the install CDs. OS3.5 94MB, OS3.9 480MB ...

OS3.9 is wee bit heavier than 3.5...

[Franko]

There are nearly 400 MB of AVI and MP3 files on the OS 3.9 CD. The system itself is almost the same as 3.5. Only additions are AmiDock, Amplifier and Action.

Your right about that but most of the folk who have PMd me asking for help with installing 3.9 insist on wanting to keep these AVI & MP3 files then don't understand why so much space has been taken up on their little 4GB CF drives and when I try to tell them you can safely delete them most don't as they seem to think they are somehow required by the OS...