A1200 Hard drive upgrade - help required please

[wandeep]

Hi,

My 1st post so please don't be too mean

I've recently brought my Amiga 1200 back from the dead, well my parent's loft to be precise but you get the point lol I haven't used the A1200 for a about 13 years so am a bit rusty to say the least.

Anyway back in the day (1993!) I squeezed in a 3.5" hard disk into the A1200 case and it worked really well. However 15 years on the hard drive is just about working (takes a few reboots before it kicks in) which is expected I guess. I now want to replace the hard drive with a newer one but wanted to know what is the maximum hard drive capacity the A1200 can support?

I've herad somewhere it's 4GB, but I need someone to confirm this. If a larger hadr drive can be added, are there any instructions on how to get the A1200 to support the larger capacity?

Thanks in advance...I'm loving using my beloved A1200 again after all these years...

[tokyoracer]

4GB is the maximum. I'm not sure if 4GB is the top limit or if  it's 4GB partitions.

By the way, welcome to the scene, it's a bug you cannot escape from as you may know after 13 years you have come back! :lol:

[Phantom]

Any Amiga with lower OS than 3.9 cannot recognise hard drives more then 4GB (I don't remember about 3.5), so even if you install a 40GB hard drive into your A1200 with AmigaOS 3.1, you will have only 4GB.

Also consider that if you want to install OS 3.9 you must have Kickstart 3.1 (A1200 comes with 3.0 version), and ensure that the first partition (the boot one) doesn't exceed 1 or 2GB else you will have problems I think. The other partitions can be formatted as much as you want.

... and welcome, it's glad seeing people after 10 years or so, rejoin our community. ;-)

[wandeep]

Thanks for your prompt replies :-)

I believe I only have Kickstart 3.0 and am not sure how easy/hard it is to upgrade to 3.1 and how much it would cost.

I'm also slowly getting back into the Amiga so will take a bit of time to familarise myself with all the old stuff I took for granted lol

I'm really enjoying using the Amiga again...it's bringing back so many great memories :-)

I'm also trying to build up my games collection so no doubt will be using these forums a lot lol

[Phantom]

Vesalia have Kickstart ROMs 3.1 for A1200, 17.50 euros I think. Or try AmigaKit, it's the same. But you need an official AmigaOS 3.9 CD, which is about 40-45 euros I pressume.

[Nlandas]

wandeep wrote:
Thanks for your prompt replies :-)

I believe I only have Kickstart 3.0 and am not sure how easy/hard it is to upgrade to 3.1 and how much it would cost.

I'm really enjoying using the Amiga again...it's bringing back so many great memories :-)

I'm also trying to build up my games collection so no doubt will be using these forums a lot lol

You'll want 3.1 ROMs. I got a set on eBay new for like $24USD shipped for my A1200. Amiga OS 3.5 and 3.9 are definetely worth an upgrade.

Take a look at IDEFIX97 on Aminet and
Smart File System.

These two packages will allow you to support larger than 4GB dries but many still recommend keeping partition sizes below 4GB because of memory requirements to rebuild a volume. Unless you have a lot of fastmem I've read on several forums and web sites that keeping them below 4GB gives you better performance as well. Hopefully, others can elaborate.

I have 1GB(OS), 5GB(WHDLoad) and 2 4GB paritions on my 2.5" laptop drive and it works well. Thanks to this forum I'm back online after many years myself.

I also got a major speed boost by adding a buffered IDE controller from AmigaKit for like $20USD. Drive access is a lot faster and smoother now.

Oh, BTW, your 3.5" drive may be putting too much load on your 23 watt A1200 power supply. It might not be the drive itself. You may want to get an ATX power supply and a converter to an A1200 for it if you plan to expand a lot.

-Nyle

[wurzel]

Well, I'm not entirely sure about partitions, but I have IDEFix on my system as well as OS3.9. My 1st drive is 2bg, partioned, but my data drive is 40gb, not partioned. It works well.

[rkauer]

 I still use a 43Gb HD with Workbench 3.1 with no problem at all! Never had a devalidation, nor lost partitions or files.

 All you need is SFS for partitions after the 4Gb border and IDEfix97 (from aminet) in order to boot. Oh, and one (never both) of two patches: NSD or TD64 (your choice).

 Partitions formatted with FFS must be before the 4Gb barrier, and they can't exceed 2Gb each.

 The are after the barrier don't have any limitation if used with SFS or FFS from OS3.5/3.9.

 But for better organization and speed, create one partition for each type application: system, applications (work), games, pictures, music and so long.

 Read carefully each "readme" on the archives before install and use them!