Amiga 4000D Hard disk problems

[lopos]

I am trying to install a new hard disk into my Amiga 4000D.
It's a Quantum Fireball lct10 5.1 GB. Install 3.1 won't reconise it. So, I put in the parameters myself and it only comes up 796MB. What is going on?  :pissed:  :-?
Any ideas. And, what hard drives can I use with the Amiga 4000D?
TIA
Lopos

[doctorq]

Try downloading HDInstTools.lha from Aminet and see if it helps. The problem is most likely because of the drive being 5.1 GB and therefore it exceeds the 4 GB barrier of OS3.0/OS3.1.

If you got Kickstart 3.1 in the machine already, then try to get hold of OS3.5 or OS3.9 as the problems are fixed with these newer versions of Workbench (you will need the Boingbags for OS3.5 to fix the barrier problem though, but they are easy to find).

-EDIT-

Oh, I forgot. Try to just install the harddrive using HDToolbox. Ignore the - figure there might be. Go to the partitioning screen and set up some partitions. You should be able to create partitions without any problems, but will see strange figures when going past the 4 GB of the drive. Setup a 250 MB partition for Workbench, and install the OS. After that, find some patches (TD64) on Aminet and install them. You should now be able to use the rest of your drive.

Or you could just install SFS :-)

[lopos]

@doctorq
Ta very much. I'll try it out later.
See Ya

[patrik]

@lopos:

There is some more info about the 4GB issue on this page.


(edit):

Forgot to say that to use the first 4GB of the harddrive without any extra stuff needed, just autodetect the size of the harddrive in HDToolBox and don't worry about wierd reported sizes. After that partition the drive and be sure to follow these rules:
1. Make the partitions smaller than 2GB.
2. Use a bit less than the _first_ 4GB of the harddrive.


/Patrik

[darksun9210]

yeah i had a 5.1Gb quantum fireball with the exact same problem.

it wasn't so much of a problem, but just a size issue.
i remember it came up with -796Mb or something.

not actually detrimental to using the drive, just anything over 4Gb (4096MB) got shown in minus numbers.

the formatted capacity of the drive was something like 4882MB so thats 4096 + 796. so the drive shows as -796MB on HD toolbox as that is the amount that is over the 4Gb limit.

ran happily in an A4000/030 OS3.0 just with dodgy size reporting... just not really advisable to put a partition in the space after the 4Gb limit...