Troubles With Large HDs...

[Franko]

Seems from recent threads that a lot of folk are having trouble setting up HDs larger than 4GB. Most seem to be having trouble in getting an HD formatted correctly setting up partition sizes max transfer etc...

As I've never had a problem myself setting up a large HD, and as it's quite difficult to try and explain to someone over the net or via email just how to go about this task, I have been thinking of putting together some sort of floppy disk to try and make this task easier for those having problems...

This would however only apply to those using hardware like the 4xEIDE or FastATA buffered interface boards from Elbox for the A1200 and hopefully the built in IDE interface on the Amiga motherboard...

Please don't ask me about SCSI drives or CF Drives though as I don't use them or have the equipment to test them on I only use IDE/Atapi drives. Also I only use the standard Amiga file systems IE: FastFileSystem (FFS) and SmartFileSystem (SFS).

So before I go about putting in the time and effort to create such an install/format disk, I was just wondering if there are enough folk out there experiencing problems setting up large HDs for me to put the effort in with this project or indeed if you think it would something useful and worthwhile for us Amiga users...

Anyone willing to help on this or have some good ideas about this themselves would be greatly appreciated in helping with this project...

Cheers :drink:

Franko

[Franko]

The only time I had a problem with a HD > 4GB was down to an OS3.9 rom update being replaced with one from 3.5 (as indicated by the filesystem resource version) which was readily fixed. Not sure what happened there but I had been tinkering and may have overwritten it, thus a clear case of PEBCAK.

However, I think that it might be handy for people that are returning to the scene after years away, or people that are new to it all. My first suggestion would be to make a downloadable archive that can be extracted to a floppy and if there is enough demand for it then go that way.

Incidentally, if you aren't using SCSI on your Blizzard (assuming it has it) then you are a very silly person. Like me 10MB/s DMA-based disk transfer is nice to have...

I was thinking along the lines of putting together an ADF file for folk to download so they could create a floppy that would allow them to install/format an HD from scratch...

Course my BLizzard has SCSI but IDE is cheaper and fast enough to do the job. Also SCSI drives as far as I can tell are no longer manufactured, ever tried buying a brand new one lately...

Apart from finding somewhere that still has a stock of SCSI drives the prices they charge are ridiculous compared to IDE. Even IDE drives are being phased out of production in favour of SATA as I was informed recently in a phone converation with SeaGate in America...