A1200 hard drive problem

[dougal]

My A1200 has had this really annoying and persisting problem ever since i changed hard drives.

Sometimes hard drive access will just freeze.

Some typical situations where is sometimes (10-20% of time) happens:

Loading workbench @ loading MagicMenu
Loading a any apps, be it Whdload games or anything else
Transferring files

The hard drive is a 20GB Toshiba 2.5" laptop drive. It is formatted using SFS and has 3 partitions all of them less then 1.5GB in size.

I did all the correct settings for SFS in HDtoolbox including setting the buffers to 100 etc.. etc.. and i always pressed ENTER after entering the values and everything saved as its supposed to have.

The hard drive is connected to the A1200's internal IDE port. There is also an IDE CDROM drive attached to the same cable. I have IDEfix installed.

I also checked that everything was plugged in properly.

[mfilos]

With the previous HD that you had you didn't have any freeze?
Also what partitioning scheme did you use on your previous HD?

I tend to make my own partitions 1GB just for safety reasons but logically you're ok with boot partitions under the 4GB barrier.

Also it would be a nice thing to try a newer scsi.device via LoadModule since your HD is over 4GB.
If you have ClassicWB there is a simple video you can follow: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpKjbxflLLo&

If you don't then you just need to have a newer scsi.device that will load via LoadModule in your startup-sequence upon boot and you'll be ok with large hardrive support for sure

[Thomas]

Does the drive make some special noise before it freezes? For example a click, a beep or does the rotation speed vary?

Is the power supply sufficient?

[dougal]

Does the drive make some special noise before it freezes? For example a click, a beep or does the rotation speed vary?

Is the power supply sufficient?

Nope, the hard drive is very silent and no particular sounds. The power supply is a 200 watts converted AT PC psu.

[dougal]

With the previous HD that you had you didn't have any freeze?
Also what partitioning scheme did you use on your previous HD?

It was the factory 170MB hard drive partitioned and formatted into 2 partitions (Work & System) by Escom/Amiga Inc. There were no problems.

Also it would be a nice thing to try a newer scsi.device via LoadModule since your HD is over 4GB.
If you have ClassicWB there is a simple video you can follow: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpKjbxflLLo&

If you don't then you just need to have a newer scsi.device that will load via LoadModule in your startup-sequence upon boot and you'll be ok with large hardrive support for sure

I disconnected the CDROM. Will try it for a bit like that and see if i have any problems. If i do i will try the newer SCSI.DEVICE thingy.

Cheers

[dougal]

Where do i get a newer scsi.device from ?

Note.. Usually when the problem occurs the hard drive light remains on

[mfilos]

Where do i get a newer scsi.device from ?

You can get Doobrey's scsi.device 44.2 from 3.9's unofficial BoingBag3:
Download: http://amigan.1emu.net/releases/BoingBag3.lha
Path: BoingBag3.9-3/Files2/Devs/scsi_A1200.device

You can get Cosmos's scsi.device 43.47b1 from 3.9's unofficial BoingBag4:
Download: http://amigan.1emu.net/releases/BoingBag4.lha
Path: BoingBag3.9-4/Files2/Devs/scsi_A600_A1200.device

Just rename to scsi.device and put under DEVS folder.
Then using LoadModule... alter your Startup-Sequence and add the following command as your first line:

Code: [Select]

C:LoadModule Devs:scsi.device