A1200 with many partitions: disk buffers/icons eating up all chipram

[HardStep]

Hi,
i'm having a little problem with my Amiga, have about 20 1-5G partitions, and when opening one of them with 30 or more icons, i lose all Chip memory.
Machine is A1200/060/16mb fast running OS3.9/SFS.
Can i force the system to use Fastmem or what else should i do?
And another question. Sfter i disable some of the partitions under EarlyStartupMenu, they still appear after boot. So i'm unable to disable my first os3.9 partition and boot from the next one containing wb3.1.
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks.

[CLS2086]

Hi,
reduce the color mode to 4 colors !
And check if you have the lastest SFS release !

[Framiga]

go to SYS:Prefs/Workbench and chose to use "Other Mem" (or so... i'm on MOS ATM)

About the EarlyBootMenu, select in the list on the left column, the partition you wish to boot from.

[Matt_H]

Make sure you're reaching the Early Boot Menu after the 3.9 modules have been kicked in, otherwise the machine will just reboot and nullify whatever selection you made.

And 20 partitions seems a little excessive. Maybe it's time to streamline your setup? :-)

[HardStep]

Thanks for replys.
So how would the system function if instead of 20some 5G partitions i had 3 30G ones? I'm a bit scared about partition content read/refresh times.
I have latest SFS, yes. And hard drive is 100G 2.5" 4200rpm with 8mb cache, connected to IdeFix Express buffered interface.
So what do you guys think, will a setup like that benefit from a few large partitions (instead many smaller ones)?
Also, what should be the optimal size for disk buffers?

[leirbag28]

@HardStep

Wow.....20 Partitions, thats got to be a Record hehe

I myself have about 10 Partitions. 2 for Workbenches 3.1 and 3.9 and the rest are: Work - Work8......they are about 4 gig each (40gig HD)

WHy is your harddrive only 4200 rpm? is it  a laptopHD?  they finally got them in 100gb?  cool...got to get me one........does the 8mb Cache speed up things?


Anyway.....there is a way to disable the HD's from OS3.9............Select WORKBENCH in the prefs and you will see the option "HIDDEN DEVICES" then just check off the ones you dont want to be seen........then save it like that and reboot.  This is also good if there is content on one of the HD's that contains personall data that you dont want to be seen.

[Matt_H]

@ HardStep

I can't picture there being any problems with larger partitions, but the SFS experts here can provide a definitive answer.

@ leirbag28

Note that using the WB prefs doesn't actually disable the partitions. They still use up memory and can still be accessed from the Shell and DOpus. Turning off Automount in HDToolBox would get rid of them, but that might be too permanent a solution :-)

[leirbag28]

@Matt_H

What I suggested..hides the icons......thus saving ChipRAM which is what he is trying to do.


as far as them still being accessible..............I was'nt able to do that. And programs that needed those particualr Partitions couldnt access them if I am not mistaken...........I could be wrong on that part and I may be thinking of when the HD's didnt show up unintentionally

[Matt_H]

@ leirbag28

Ah. Yes, it'll save a bit of RAM by not displaying icons, but some RAM is still needed since the partitions are actually mounted (though that might actually be Fast RAM). With 20 partitions, the total used could be a lot.

Typing 'info' in a shell reveals all my partitions, even the hidden ones.

[AmigaMance]

Can i force the system to use Fastmem or what else should i do?

 How come nobody mentioned of FBlit? It's exactly what HardStep needs!... :-/  And after FBlit you can install SystemPatch for even greater system performance. Use Google to find the latest versions, not Aminet.

 About the disk caches there is not much that you can do, except of keeping them low or convince a coder to make this: http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=22891

Edit: If the disk buffers are using chip ram, you have configured something wrong. They should always use Fast ram. Check the HDToolBox settings.

[HardStep]

Gonna give FBlit and Systempatch a try.
And also reorganize my hard drive. Actually, right now i have only WB3.9, some tools/utils on it and 300mb Whdloaded games.
So theres nothing to lose repartitioning it.
Thanks.

[Framiga]

try to post your full HDToolbox settings(like Mask-MaxTransfers-dosbuffers per partition)

And about icon display speed, someone reported that IconBeFast a good patch speed wise. (Aminet)