Laaaarge HD?

Hi,
just got an a4000 with buddha and 3.1 kick, but I would like to install a 120G hd. So far the early-startup mentiones a 8GB drive. I do have pfs3 (maybe it was 2) cd's around. Now where do I go from here, and is it possible to create say 40G partitions or is the limit at 8GB per partition??

Thanks in advance,
P

[Piru]

You will have problems setting the drive up with just 3.1 HDToolBox, I'm afraid... Maybe aminet has something that can digest the large drive though.

Personally I used IDEFix back when my HDs were IDE, worked just fine.

PFS3 can handle 40gig partitions without any problems, got one 40gig, 4 x 20gig, and bunch of smaller partitions here (thru BPPC scsi with SCSIDE).

However whatever you do, do NOT normal-format the partitions you create, always use quickformat.

[Karlos]

Sorry, just saw the title and had a flashback to 'Vic Reeves Big Night Out'...

L'arrrrge!

Anyway, AFAIK, as long as your boot partition is <4Gb, OS3.5/3.9 (or 3.1 with the TD64 update) will be happy enough.

[filson]

PFS2 used to advertize with 64 bit harddisk access.
Thats some terabytes worth of disk, so you should be covered :-)

[Thomas]

If you see only 8GB, you have done something wrong when connecting the drive. Such large drives usualy have a jumper that limits the capacity to 8GB for old BIOSes. You have to remove this jumper.

The 3.1 HDToolbox should be able to partition the drive. But it will show some strange numbers for the size (e.g. negative). Better you use the 3.9 HDToolbox or HDInstTools.

Additionaly you have to use the direct-scsi version of PFS (PFS2ds or PFS3ds). Or you need an additional patch for the IDE driver. This could be IDEfix or OS3.9. In this case, the boot partition must reside within the first 4GB of the drive.

Bye,
Thomas

You can also use SmartFileSystem which is free on Aminet. Personally i use SFS version 1.195 which is available at Amigascene on all my Amiga systems. I rent out Amigas with Infochannel, and they just keep running and running. No Validation errors here :-)

SFS supports partitions up to 2000Gb in size.

[Vincent]

Thomas wrote:

If you see only 8GB, you have done something wrong when connecting the drive. Such large drives usualy have a jumper that limits the capacity to 8GB for old BIOSes. You have to remove this jumper.

This isn't strictly true.  I have an 18Gb HD.  HDToolbox 3.1 could only see it as 8Gb no matter what I did (there are no jumpers on it to set the size).  When I installed OS3.9, that HDToolbox saw it as the full 18Gb HD.

The 3.1 HDToolbox should be able to partition the drive. But it will show some strange numbers for the size (e.g. negative). Better you use the 3.9 HDToolbox or HDInstTools.

HDToolbox 3.1 (as far as I know) has a limit to 8Gb.  It will not allow you to partition a drive bigger than that.  3.9 however will partition the HD quite easily.

[pVC]

Use the DirectScsi (DS) version of the PFS and you don't have to worry any limits. With non-ds version you have to be sure that your device supports large partitions/harddisks.