A2000 Formatted HELP!

[ddogg66]

I recently formatted the HDD on my A2000 but don't know how to get the workbench software (v1.3) to copy over to the HDD. I have no experience really with doing any of this on the Amiga. I'm a Mac kid who loves the toaster. I use 2.0 software. I have all the software needed including a trump pro disk and workbench 1.3 along with 12 Toaster 2.0 disks. I have never formatted an Amiga before. I thought I'd be able to simply drag the contents from the floppy to the desktop and it would copy like modern OS's but this isn't the case. Can someone help me? Should there be an icon on the desktop for the HDD? What is the first step after formatting? CLI commands? What commands do I use. As you can see I'm totally lost here. Any help would be wonderful!! I have a Trump Pro HDD controller, Rev 6.2 Board, 2 TBC cards and maybe a GVP accelerator?  Would someone pass a life preserver please :-o

[iamaboringperson]

hmmm..
Never installed 1.3 to the HDD before, but I'll see what I can do.
You first need to create partitions on the HDD, using 'HDToolBox'
Then after a reboot, you will see an Icon for you new partition(s), all you should need to do then is select the icon, and select 'Initiallise' from one of the menu's, and after a few  "Are you sure?" questions it will format.
This is the part I might have trouble with:
In theory you should be able to drag the icons accross from the disks to the HDD, or at least under 2.04 and higher you can, since there are files on those disks that are hidden to you, and can only be revealed with either 2.0 and higher or using the CLI.
See if there is an installer script on one of your disks, if not you may have to resort to the Shell.
:-)

[DoomMaster]

Do you have a Commodore A2091 SCSI Controller board inside your Amiga 2000?  If not, I highly recommend that you buy one.  I just bought today an A2091 with 2 megs of memory from eBay for less then $10.00 and that included the shipping.  The A2091 is the best SCSI Controller card that you can get for an Amiga 2000.  In fact, it is such a nice card that even Amiga 4000 owners use them in their computers.  When you buy an A2091 board make sure that you get the software too.  Here are the steps to properly formatting a hard drive on an Amiga 2000:

You must first define the new drive type and save it to the disk in DF0.  Second, do a low-level format.  Then verify the data on the drive, this will check the hard disk for bad blocks.  Next you should partition the hard disk, the default is 2 equal sized partitions.  after this is done, reboot your machine using control + left Amiga + right Amiga.  DO NOT TURN THE AMIGA OFF AND THEN BACK ON (cold boot)!  After workbench (from the A2091 disk in DF0) loads back up, you will see an icon for each of your partitions.  The letter in front of DH0, DH1, etc. is the first letter of the actual name of the hard drive.  For instance, if the hard drive is a Quantum then the icons will be named QDH0, QDH1, and so on.  Now initialize each partition just like you would if you were formatting a disk.  Please keep in mind that formatting an Amiga hard drive can take a long time.  A 1 Gig hard drive usually takes about 2.5 hours to fully initialize.  2 to 4 gig drives take even longer.  After the hard drive is formatted turn the computer off for about 30 minutes.  After formatting for that long, the hard drive will usually be quite hot, so it must be allowed to cool down a bit before copying Workbench over to it.  If you fail to allow for the cool-down period the hard drives life will be shortened.  To copy Workbench just copy each disk, one at a time, to the hard drive by dragging the disk icon over to the hard drive icon and dropping it.  You can also use a program like DiskMaster (that's what I use).  These instructions are for Workbench 1.3.  I hope this helps you     :-D

[Steady]

[edit: fixed my typos]

This should help you a bit:

Boot using your Workbench 1.3 floppy disk.

Open the Shell or CLI.

Format your harddrive partitions. The boot partition needs to be formatted as OFS. Check your manual cos I can't remember but the format syntax should be (1> is the prompt):
1> format drive DH0: name Workbench

If your boot partition is not DH0:, change the DH0: to the correct volume. This applies to all future commands too. I named it Workbench for consistency.

Make sure your Workbench partition is bootable by entering:
1> install DH0:

Change to the root directory of the Workbench1.3 floppy disk as shown below:
1> cd SYS:

Now use the following copy command to copy the full contents of your Workbench floppy disk to Workbench (boot) partition.:
1> copy #? to Workbench: all

This will copy all of your Workbench floppy to your hard disk partition.

Remove the Workbench1.3 floppy and reboot.

The hard drive should boot Workbench. Now you can use the same method to copy your extras disk, although you may want to create a new drawer and put it on that. It is not vital where you put this stuff. It is up to you, but it is best to retain a similar directory structure. Here are the commands if you want to put it in an already created 'Extras' drawer and you have put the Extras1.3 disk in your disk drive:
1> cd Extras1.3:
1> copy #? to Workbench:Extras all

You could probably get away with dragging and dropping the stuff on the extras disk if you want, but the CLI command will make sure you get it all.

Shout out if there's a problem.

[iamaboringperson]

Oh dear...

The A2091 is the best SCSI Controller card that you can get for an Amiga 2000.

Why? According to whom? Because I have a GVP card, and it works fine in my machine!

[iamaboringperson]

Make sure your Workbench partition is bootable by entering:
1> install DH0:

I have a problem with that statement.
It's for floppies! You do not need to install a bootblock to get a HDD to boot on the Amiga!!

[Jope]

Ok, once you have the HD formatted, you need to boot from the WB floppy disk, open it and go into the shell.

Then say:

copy sys: dh0: all clone

of course replace dh0: with the label or devicename of your hard disk.

You can then reboot and copy the extras disk over,
copy df0: sys: all clone

(a reboot is a good idea, because then the copy command will be loaded from the HD. You can of course assign C: to dh0:c any time, but a reboot is easier here if you're new to Amigas)

PS. Drag 'n drop installing isn't as common outside the Mac world as you might imagine.

Many Amiga software is installable with a drag 'n drop, but many times you need to at least copy a few libraries by hand if you don't want to use installers.

OS2.0 and forward lets you view the iconless files as well on the disk, so you can also drag 'n drop install the OS if you really insist. ;-) It's best to use an installer, though, with the newer AmigaOS versions.

[edit: seems I'm a bit late, but my instructions don't have typographical or factual errors in them! ;-)]

[xeron]

The A2091 is the best SCSI Controller card that you can get for an Amiga 2000.

The SCSI on the Blizzard 2060 is Fast SCSI-II, and can DMA to 32bit fast ram. It is just in another league.

[Steady]

Yes you do!

Without the install command, the boot block of the Workbench partition will not be able to boot. This code is REQUIRED on any bootable partition, be that floppy disk, hard disk or otherwise.

The only thing that may be a prob there, is optimising the startup-sequence for harddrive use. I think C= put a hard drive startup-sequence for use, but since I can't remember the details, I cannot advise further on this.

It is amazing how being at work can make your responses overly formal.  :-o

[ddogg66]

Ok, guys, first off thanks for all the responses. I love an active forum. Here is my problem as it stands now. I do not know the device name of dh0 on my system. Therefore I can't enter half the commands you all listed. For example when I type:
1> fomat drive: dh0: name workbench (which isn't the real name i suppose) I get a message that says ...[noicons] at the end of the line. Keep in mind that I have absolutely no real experience maintaining an amiga. I find all this very esoteric. No info can be found on the net outside forums like these (that's my experience anyway, please show me different!)

So many responses to my question i don't know who to address first. From what i gather I first need to create partions (default 2) in order to do anything else. How do i do this if I don't know DH0 device name? I held both mouse button at boot and drives listed were: df0 and dh0 so my HDD must be dh0, right? I need to know how to make these partitions, because right now the only icon on my workbench is the icon for the 1.3 floppy-no partitiobns-no HDD (DH0 icon) and How do i make the boot partition OFS?


also do i need to do a low level format on a drive i already formatted? How does one verify a drive for bad blocks? is this not done during formatting?

Too bad one of you aren't here with me to help. I'm sure this is a simple process once you understand how it's done. Any more help would be most appreciated guys. I haven't yet left square one. :-?

[DoomMaster]

You have to FIRST define the drive parameters or else the Amiga will NOT know what type of hard drive you have installed.  You MUST then do a Low-Level Format on the NEW hard drive.  What I mean by new is a hard drive that has never been formatted on an Amiga before.  Then partition the hard drive.  Then do a warm-reboot.  Then you should be able to format the hard drive partitions from Workbench, there is no need for you to go into the CLI.  If you are new to the Amiga computer I highly recommend that you get yourself an A2091 SCSI Controller card with the software.  The A2091 Installation Software is so EASY to use, so for beginners it is the perfect solution.  If you follow my instructions IT WILL WORK!     :-D

[ddogg66]

you have to FIRST define the drive parameters or else the Amiga will NOT know what type of hard drive you have installed.  You MUST then do a Low-Level Format on the NEW hard drive.  What I mean by new is a hard drive that has never been formatted on an Amiga before.

The HD in my amiga was working fine before I formatted. I was running toaster 2.0 soft and workbench 1.3 was on the boot partition, so this HD is not "new" and was formatted with the amiga

Then partition the hard drive.  Then do a warm-reboot

How do I partion the HD? Is a warm boot performed by pressing both left & right amiga keys plus control?

I highly recommend that you get yourself an A2091 SCSI Controller card with the software.  The A2091 Installation Software is so EASY to use, so for beginners it is the perfect solution.  If you follow my instructions IT WILL WORK!      

I don't see why I need to spend any more money as the system was working fine before I formatted (I formatted in order to fix some bad blocks on the HD) I'd love to see your idea work for me, but i don't want to do anymore purchasing as it seems unnecessary.

[ddogg66]

first need to create partitions on the HDD, using 'HDToolBox'

Where can I get it? This seems to be what I need :-D

[N7VQM]

DoomMaster wrote:
 You MUST then do a Low-Level Format on the NEW hard drive.  

IT WILL WORK!     :-D

No, it may not work.  Low-level formating a harddisk may make it unusable.  You should never use HDToolBox to low-level format a drive.

Most harddisk makers have special tools for low-level formating thier drives.  These tools perform the format while retaining the defect list and other information.  Using a tool like HDToolBox wipes that information out.  I learned this the hard way and I'm warning you now:  DON'T DO IT.  Use HDToolBox to partition the drive (but not low-level format!) and use the OS tools to format those partitions.

[iamaboringperson]

@N7VQM
What you might be thinking about are IDE drives.
Don't low-level format an IDE drive.
With SCSI drives it should be fine, but it is only needed once.
Once low-level formatted, you can use it on any computer.