Want to upgrade my IDE HD on my A1200T. Ideas + tips?

[marcfrick2112]

Hello all, Sorry for what is probably a stupid question, put have had a bad run of luck with computers lately (thankfully, it's only my dad's old IBM-comp PC) and I may need a 'refrsher course'....
I want to upgrade my Amiga 1200T's IDE Hard Drive (8.5 GB), to something like 40GB, or more. I assume that I could set it as a 'slave', install it in place of my CD-ROM, format, partition, and then copy my SYS: and all other files over, and then put it in place of my original HD, set as 'Master', right?
I am running OS 3.9 with BB 1 & 2, FFS...any precautions on partitioning the HD? I read that the boot partition should reside within the first 2GB, should it be smaller than 2GB, or can I use the full 2GB? How large can the partitions be? Finally, can anyone recommend a reliable brand for hard drives? It seems that I read more and more of catastophic HD failures, even after only a month or two.  :roll: Obviously, losing my boot HD is Not an option...Any Help would be great....

P.S. Sorry, I asked some of these questions before, but I couln't find them in the posts (yes, I used the search)... :-?

[amigagr]

you are on the right way to do that as all of your thoughts are fine. you just need to buy the hard disk. avoid to use more than 1gb for boot partition, you will never need even this space for workbench. think about use the sfs on the new disk and not ffs. it's faster and most safe and working better with large partitions. sfs use the os3x 1.254 version.

-edit-
before you remove the cdrom, remove the cd driver from devs:dosdrivers. you will put it back again when reconnect the cdrom.

[CLS2086]

And the magic syntax (open a CLI):
copy volume1: volume2: all clone

 :-)

[marcfrick2112]

Thanks to both of you for the responses.
@amije: Why can't I use more than 1GB for the boot partition? I know, technically I shouln't ever need 2GB for SYS:, but I really wanted to have all my fonts on the boot partition, as many older programs can't see a FONTS: assignment on anything other than SYS: I had read that as long as I keep the boot partition within the 2GB mark, I should be fine....Any ideas?
Second, why to I need to remove the cd driver from DEVS/DosDrivers/ ? Just curious, as I have never heard of this before. Also, can anyone recommend a reliable brand of hard drive? Many thanks.

[pjhutch]

If you have a modern file system, then it should be no more 4GB (although WB sometimes has trouble displaying or calculating  sizes over 2GB due to WB using 32 bit values for files etc).

I would leave the CD driver in DOSDrivers, there is no need to move it.

Most brands of HD are reliable, just don`t get a SATA drive!

[Thomas]

The CD driver will complain about the CD not present or it will give you a CD0:unformatted icon on the Workbench while a second HDD is connected in place of the CD drive.

It's just cosmetic to move the dosdriver from devs to storage in order to avoid the hassle of intuition not being able to set the correct screen mode because of the open requester.

Bye,
Thomas