New HD partitioned and WB installed Ok, but not booting & cannot see in WB

[rammydcfc]

Hi, I gave up after wiping my original 60Mb hd and failing to reinstall WB due to disk errors (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=21969)

I've now got hold of a 125Mb laptop disk and have inserted into my A1200.

The hdtoolbox program on my install disk, found and partitioned my disk Ok. I even managed to go through the WB install routine and all files seemed to be copied over ok.

But, when I rebooted the amiga, it didn't boot from the hard disk. When I boot from a Workbench floppy, I cannot see the hd partitions.

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Many thanks,
Rich

[Flashlab]

Did you make the partition with the WB on it bootable in HDToolbox?

Check if the partition shows up in the Early Startup menu (hold the two mouse buttons during reset).

[rammydcfc]

Ok, I've just had another couple of goes...
The HDSetup program seems to run Ok and creates a 8Mb 'Workbench' partition and the remaining space as a partition labelled 'Work'.

At this point the drives appear as icons on workbench and I can browse them. I can even run the install script to install Workbench etc onto the 8Mb partition.

But, as soon as I reboot the A1200, all trace of these partitions (in fact the hard disk in general) seems to disappear.

If I go back into the HDtoolbox program, the partitions still exist on the drive.

Am I doing something wrong, or is there some sort of hard disk recognition problem?

edit - yes the partition was marked as bootable and neither partition showed up in the early boot-up screen.

Thanks,
Rich

 :-?

[Flashlab]

That is weird indeed... I can only suggest trying a different drive.

[Thomas]

This is a known problem, the HDD does not come up fast enough to be recognised by the controller. Also it spins down at a reset, so this happens on all resets.

What you can do:
- upgrade to Kickstart 3.1. Kick 3.1 waits longer for the HDD to come up (see "looooong boot time" thread above :-D)

- cut the reset line on the IDE cable. The line connected to pin 1 on the motherboard is the reset line. If it is cut, the HDD does not spin down during a reset. However, you might still see the floppy disk animation on power-up.

Bye,
Thomas

[rammydcfc]

Hi Thomas,

Thanks for your suggestions, but how does this explain why I can't see the hard disk when booting from a Workbench floppy?

Thanks,
Rich

[Thomas]

The driver only scans the bus for devices once at reset time. It does not matter from which drive you boot, if the IDE driver didn't find an IDE device at reset time, you won't see it later, too.

Bye,
Thomas

[rammydcfc]

Oh I see, now I understand.

Is there a list anywhere that contains makes/models of disks to avoid?

Thanks

[amigagr]

avoid western digital. they aren't anything else except noisy b....rds. go for a seagate.