reinstall HD?

[frl9lk]

My A4000/40 doesn't recognize its HD, I think. It will boot to a floppy or go directly to a WB screen that must be in ROM (3.1). If I reinstall the HD -- which had five partitions (and had been working fine for more than a year) -- will I only only lose the former root directory or will the whole thing get wiped?

I reseated _everything_ and swapped the memory... any thoughts as to cause?

[Bazzaq]

If you can boot from a workbench floppy? can you see any of the old paritions. If so then you system partition just needs reinstalling.

[Amiduffer]

If you can boot from a floppy, all the partitions should show up. If your boot partition is messed up, it'll have NDOS or ? and all it would take is just a simple formating (click on HD0: and pick format from the menu) and re-installation of WB.

[frl9lk]

The setup was this: a 4-6G internal drive partitioned to five, two external 2G drives each partitioned to two. Booting from floppy, I see all my external SCSI stuff (controller is a Fastlane with .device in rom). I reinstalled OS 3.1, but HDsetup and toolbox only see a 14 meg drive (perhaps my original root partition). At this point I'm ready to do a low level format in order to try to get back the full capacity (since it looks like I'm in for a major re-build no matter what) but I'm not being allowed -- clicking "continue" goes nowhere. Any suggestions other than chucking the whole thing out the window?

[Thomas]

At this point I'm ready to do a low level format in order to try to get back the full capacity (since it looks like I'm in for a major re-build no matter what)

Keep away from the Low-Level-Format button ! There is no way for a user to low level format an IDE harddrive. Sending the command to an IDE harddrive might do unpredictable things to the HDD. Most modern drives just initialize their internal bad-block table (which happens very fast, that's why you think nothing happens) but older drives might even get destroyed completely.


What you are experiencing is a typical 4GB-Problem. You used a drive bigger than 4GB without installing the needed software patches. This leads to complete data loss sooner or later. That's what happened to you.

The 14MB printed by HDToolbox is not correct, either. Programs of that age cannot deal with numbers bigger than 2G. Therefore everything between 2G and 4G becomes negative and everything above 4GB becomes very small.

You have to calculate the correct numbers yourself. Or just trust HDToolbox that internally everything works correctly.

When creating partitions, make sure that the space occupied by all partitions together is smaller than 4GB. Do not create partitions on the right of the imaginary 4GB bar.

Bye,
Thomas

[Voyager74]

@Thomas :
"When creating partitions, make sure that the space occupied by all partitions together is smaller than 4GB. Do not create partitions on the right of the imaginary 4GB bar."
 
Are you saying that one shouldn't use more than 4Gb out of any >4Gb HD?
Not even if I make all partitions 2 or 4Gb each?
What a waste of space!!
 
I'm wondering since I'm using a 40Gb HD internal, and some of the partitions are way beyond 4Gb.
 
This shows, like you say, with negative numbers when doing like;
C:Info boot2:
But not from all partitions (yes , I've complicated things even more by
using Wb3.1, 3.9 and Magellan-II as 3 start-partitions). :crazy:
 
Is there not *any* way, soft or hard, that I may keep these partitions
without fearing dataloss one day?!
I do alot of backups just for this purpose.

[Thomas]

Not even if I make all partitions 2 or 4Gb each?

Logical partition size does not matter. The driver cannot access more than 4GB of physical space.

What a waste of space!!

You can install the right software to access the rest.

Is there not *any* way, soft or hard, that I may keep these partitions
without fearing dataloss one day?!

Boot each of your start partitions freshly after power-on, then run check4gb. If it says ok to all partitions in any case, then you are fine.

Data loss only happens if you use inappropiate drivers.

[CLS2086]

Don't your RDB is simply destroyed ?

[Thomas]

Don't your RDB is simply destroyed ?

Yes, exactly. For most people this means complete data loss.

Bye,
Thomas

[frl9lk]

Thanks for all the good information. As I recollect, I had used check4gb originally. What are the patches I shouhld add? Thanks.

[Thomas]

For your purpose (less than 8 GB) this is the easiest: FFSTD64

Or this: old SFS (But *not* this: new SFS)

For real 64bit support for HDDs bigger than 8GB these combinations are valid:

- OS 3.5

- OS 3.5 + SFS

- OS 3.9

- OS 3.9 + SFS

- IDEfix97 + FFSTD64

- IDEfix97 + SFS

- SCSI IDE + FFS from here

- SCSI IDE from here + SFS

Bye,
Thomas

[pVC]

PFS3 and PFS3DS are options too...

[frl9lk]

FFSTD64 wanted to patch either ffs 40.1 - 40.4. The version I had in was 43_20.

Anyway, I decided to "play safe" and install OS3.5. The prelim install was fine, on the reboot something went... Now I have the purple install screen, but it won't recognize an Install floppy. I've walked away for the moment.

I have to believe it's in the hardware... software wouldn't be that intermittent(?). Trash or repair?