I don't see what you are discussing here. There is a simple and always working way how to partition any hdd:
1. read the docs that came with the hdd. Ususaly everything needed is said there.
2. check the jumpers of the hdd. Some manufacturers add a jumper to limit the capacity for old PC BIOSes. This feature must be *disabled* for the Amiga.
3. verify that the install dialogue of HDToolbox gets the correct data with the "read data from drive" button. If the hdd manual does not show the values, go to the home page of the manufacturer to obtain the values. The most important value is "totat number of blocks" on the hdd. Especially if you read numbers like 16384 or 65536 or something near this for cylinders, ignore them. These are just dummy numbers for old PC BIOSes. Get the real numbers instead which must be much higher.
4. If HDToolbox does not obtain the correct values, enter them by hand.
5. the result of multiplying heads, sectors and cylinders must match the total number of blocks. Multiplied by the block size (512) gives the capacity of the hdd. Should be around 20 billion bytes (about 18 GB).
6. Save changes. Now you should be able to partition the entire drive.
7. Now be carefull: the 4GB limit applies to the hdd, not to the partitions. So think of a hidden line at the 4GB border of the hdd. The boot partition *must* be on the left of this line.
8. In order to *access* (not partition) the area above the 4GB line, you need a patch for the scsi.device. This could be either IDEfix97 or the OS3.9 ROM Update. As said before, this must be loaded on every power on.
9. Beware: accessing the area above the 4GB line without such a patch will not give you an error at once. But the access will be deviated to the area below the line and may (*will*) destroy data there. In the worst case the partition table will be destroyed and on the next boot-up all partitions are gone.
10. The size limit for partitions is not a matter of the scsi.device but of the file system. AFAIK the FastFileSystem or OS3.1 has a limit of 2GB. But this does not matter because this FS cannot access the area above 4GB either. You need to use SFS or similar.
11. Before you save data to the hdd you should check your setup using the programs from the Check4GB archive on Aminet. You should do the test twice: once directly after power-on without startup-sequence, so you test if the *boot* partition works without the patch applied, and a second time after the patch is applied, then *all* partitions should be ok. Partitions signalled as not ok must not be used for storing data.
Bye,
Thomas
