Only 8GB of 20GB HDD showing in OS 3.9

[MarkWatson]

I recently got an A1200 again. I put an old 20GB 2.5" disk I had sitting around in. The plan being to turn it into a WHDload box and maybe other stuff...

I'm aware of the 4GB limit, so I initially just partitioned 4GB of my drive (512MB main and 3GB other). Then I installed OS3.9 and BBag 2 before trying to partition the rest. Unfortunately OS3.9 only show 8GB as being available. A total of 16382 cylinders.

I'm not aware of any 8GB limit, so presumably its just confused about my drive geometry. How can I change that? I don't want to blank the HDD since I have no CDROM and installed this via floppy and wireless ethernet...

Thanks,

Mark

P.S. I tried searching and didn't find the answer to this. If someone is going to post a "please search" reply, please put the keywords to search in;-) Of course I'll probably work them out immediately after I post this!

[Piru]

Remove the jumper limiting the drive to 8GB?

See PC Guide: Hard Disk Size Barriers

The drive probably has a jumper to limit the size to 8GB so that old BIOSes don't get confused. It's likely set by default.

[TjLaZer]

Sounds like your scsi.device is not being patched to latest version, make sure it is.  Do a "version scsi.device" and report the version # back here...

[Thomas]

This is a bug in HDToolbox. Just enter the right number of cylinders manually.

Bye,
Thomas

[MarkWatson]

Thanks for the suggestions. No luck, yet though:(

scsi is version 43.43. I don't think there is an 8GB jumper on the disk. It does report as 18GB and I was using it all on the PC laptop before.

The HDtoolbox bug sounds most promising. I tried entering a number higher than 16382 into HDtoolbox when creating the new partition. It just goes straight back to 16382. Do I have to go "Install drive" and enter the details there? If I do that should I be able to put in the same partition details as my existing partitions? It warns it will delete everything. I don't want to wipe everything on the existing partitions.

Thanks,

Mark

[Thomas]

Do I have to go "Install drive" and enter the details there? If I do that should I be able to put in the same partition details as my existing partitions? It warns it will delete everything. I don't want to wipe everything on the existing partitions.

Yes, you have to go to "install drive" to increase the number of cylinders and yes, unfortunately it will delete all your partitions if you do that. So make sure you remember *all* details of your partitions before you wipe the partition table. This includes everything from the "add/update" and "change" pages (e.g. file system identifier and block size).

And make sure that you only change the number of cylinders. If you change any of the heads/sectors/blocks per cylinder values, the low cyl and high cyl values of your partitions won't match any more.

IIRC earlier versions of HDToolbox were able to change the geometry without deleting all partitions.

One could also write a small program which patches the number of cylinders in the RDB. It is just a four bytes integer value in the first block of the drive.

Bye,
Thomas

[MarkWatson]

Thanks, that did the trick. Though I broke it at first and didn't have HDToolbox for OS3.0+ around. Luckily I still had an OS2.04 install disk complete with HDToolbox. Phew...

Now I just need to sort out some large filesystems.

Thanks,

Mark

[alexh]

Thomas wrote:
This is a bug in HDToolbox. Just enter the right number of cylinders manually.

Wow seems a pretty bad bug.

Does it affect all versions of HDToolbox or just the last (44.23)?

You would have thought that someone would have fixed this?

[Thomas]

AFAIK this bug is only present in the version on the first series of OS3.9 CDs. It should be fixed in BB1 and BB2 versions.

Maybe you also need the latest scsi.device and only the combination fixes the bug.

The problem is that you cannot see more than 16383 cylinders, 16 heads and 63 sectors with the CHS method and all current HDDs report themselves to have this maximum amount which sums up to only 7.8 GB.

So as an application dealing with big HDDs you have to ignore the CHS scheme completely and just ask for the total number of sectors. This is what new versions of HDToolbox do.

Bye,
Thomas

[Framiga]

Then I installed OS3.9 and BBag 2 before...

i've noticed that the guy didn't applied BB1 before BB2.

I thought that this wouldn't necessary after all. (i always thought the the files patched were the one onto the CD and not the one installed on HD)

Thomas... its really necessary to apply BB1 before BB2?

Thanks

[Framiga]

@alexh

the last HDToolbox is 45.9 here. (BB2)

[MarkWatson]

I think I originally set up the drive with the OS3.0 HDToolbox. The OS3.9  (from AmigaOS XL CD, which includes BB1) + BB2 version detects the correct settings if I use "Install Drive".

Interestingly when I broke it, I used OS2.04's HDToolbox to fix it. That detected the drive with the correct number of cylinders to give 18.6GB! Quite surprising for such an old version.

Thanks,

Mark