What size hard drive for A1200?

[nomore]

I'm about to buy an A1200. I plan to buy WHDLoad and use it as a gaming system.

I was looking at 2.5" hard drives, and it seems that the smallest capacity available is 40GB!

Does FFS support drive this big?

Thanks.

[whabang]

nomore wrote:
I'm about to buy an A1200. I plan to buy WHDLoad and use it as a gaming system.

I was looking at 2.5" hard drives, and it seems that the smallest capacity available is 40GB!

Does FFS support drive this big?

Thanks.

Nope. Max is 4.2 gig, IIRC.
You either have to use ten partitions, or another file-system.
(unless you're using OS 3.5 or higher)

[HotRod]

Like allready said you can use that harddrive with AOS 3.5
and 3.9. Remember to set the boot partition to something
less than 2Gb though. Then it will work and you can have
the rest of the harddrive for games if you like (or more
partitions, or whatever).

[nomore]

Thanks.

What's the maximum patition size on OS3.9?

Will a modern 4200RPM 2.5" drive work in the A1200?

Will WHDLoad work properly and still make compatibility with older (non-aga compatible) games on OS3.9?

[blobrana]

Hum,
yes, the 4200RPM 2.5" should work a treat...

It may be worth looking into squeezing a slimline 3.5" HD into the machine though (it`s possible, with a 44 pin-->40 pin IDE Cable + floppy-power connector)....  :-)

[adolescent]

I have a 20GB in my A1200 and it's more than enough.  10GB would have been sufficient but like you I could not find one.  Hitachi still manufactures a 20GB so they should be available if you check harder.

[HotRod]

The limitation is a huge TB number so you don't need to worry about that :-) . There are a hardware limitation though wich limits the size to 127Gb be it partition or whole harddrive (ATA133 HD's). If you would ever need a bigger (IDE) harddrive the powerflyer would be the solution.

The reason for why you need to have the boot-partition at a maximum of 2Gb is because the limitations are in the 3.1 ROMs wich needs to be patched by spatch. This means that you have to boot with kickstart 3.1 wich will only "take" 2Gb partitions, then it will patch the ROMs and are able to use larger partitions/harddrives.

[nomore]

Would I have more trouble trying to run older software on an AT A1200 than a CBM A1200?

[Doppie1200]

Hi,

Hold on! You say 3.1 Rom will only take a 2GB partition?
I have a 3GB partition and have not done a software patch at all.

So if this true my setup should not work. Or does the trouble come when I write to a block beyond the 2GB limit. I recall reading something about a variable overflow within the software destroying your......what is it named on amiga....FAT?

[HopperJF]

Naa, I'd imagine a pre 3.5 partition limit would be 4Gb

edit: well when i say pre, i mean 3.0/3.1

[Doppie1200]

In that case all is well.

I did partition the drive using my 2.1 bootdisk from my A600. I quess that means 2.1 supports 4GB partitions aswell.