Biggest possible drives on the Amiga?

[sigmason]

What's the largest drive SCSI or IDE you can cram on an Amiga 2000, 3000,4000 and still get working?

I'm also wondering how big a drive I can cram on my Video Toaster Flyer before it will not take anymore.  I know it will take up to 21 drives on that monster.

Thanks in advance,
Sigmason

[SamuraiCrow]

It depends on what version of AmigaOS you are running.  AmigaOS 3.5 or newer supports 64-bit addressing once setpatch is loaded from the boot partition.  There is also a patch for AmigaOS 3.1 that can be downloaded separately.  This will allow full-capacity drives to be used with those systems as long as the boot partition is 2 gigs or less.

Also, you might consider SmartFilesystem rather than FFS for the larger drives and partitions since an invalidated allocation bitmap can take a long time for the disk-validator to run.

[Thomas]

Everything SamuraiCrow said applies to the internal IDE bus of an A1200/A4000/A600 only. Other controllers might be different.

With the SCSI controller like that on the CSPPC for example you can use drives of any size out of the box (with SFS or PFS3, that is).

Bye,
Thomas

[Tenacious]

These limits are the same for the stock SCSI controllers?  

I've never used any HDs above 4 Gigs, which seemed impossibly huge just a few years ago on an Amiga.  Now, with some file formats, it's starting to feel rather tight.

[wurzel]

I have a 40gb ide disk in my A1200T, but I can access an 80gb external USB drive.

I believe some people have had 200gb drives but I can't be sure.

You just need the right software/drivers and there shouldn't be a problem

[wawrzon]

i had a 160 gb drive working on my a4k either on fastata or cybscsi with no probs. i dont know about videotaster but my dps par takes a 8gb drive with no complaints wchich is two times above the official specs. ive heard it is possible to have a 16gb working but dunno, maybe its with two 8gb drives master/slave.

[amigau]

while I haven't tested this lately, my issues with drives weren't about size of drive so much as partition size, which I think still had to stay under or at 2GB?  While I think OS 3.9 upped that and improved the drive partition utility considerably, I ended up going back to 3.1 later because many programs weren't compatible with it.

But, i wonder if you can format/partition the drive using 3.9, then install 3.1 on top?  an experiment I am not motivated to try.....?  Knowing that 2GB on an Amiga is a LOT of space (still to this day), I never worried too much?

amigau
http://www.amigau.com

[Matt_H]

Flyer drives can get pretty big. I'm using a 9GB drive on each channel. I think someone else here has some 36GB drives attached, maybe even a 72GB.

Since the Flyer already has its own custom controller and filesystem, the normal scsi.device and FFS limits don't apply. I'm sure there are limits, but they're probably pretty high.

[kreciu]

I have a 4xEide with 20 Gb HDD. Fist partition 1Gb, rest partition are around 5 gb. No any problem. System 3.9, under OS3.1 I can use only 1Gb, other are "invisible" . I didn't install ANY other "drivers" just this from 4xEide. I don't have any bigger to check (only S-ATA ).

So... I think you can install OS3.1 on "small" partition and and OS3.9 will see the rest of HDD. I would leave some 1Gb partition as a exchange between OS3.1 and OS3.9 if you have to use both.

[rkauer]

 If you are running OS3.9 with bb2, there is a bug in SCSI.device who prevents the Amiga to use more than 127Gb on the internal IDE.:headwall:

 There'll be a fix for this in the next weeks...:banana:

[pVC]

Remember that there's also partition size limits on filesystems. They're bit hazy and definitions seem to change time to time But with SFS it's safe if you keep partitions under 128G each. With PFS3 it was little smaller, can't remember exactly now.

I have 80G drive on internal IDE of a1200 partitioned as one big partition. That's for storage, for booting etc I have smaller partitions on 18G SCSI drive.

On Pegasos1 I have 320G HD for MorphOS with SFS.