Hard disk checking Utlility.

[Claw22000]

I was wondering if there is an utilities to check your hard drive.  I would like to test this completely before I trust it to my real A1200 since we've grown quite close over the last few months.  (Can't afford to replace her either)

Thanks

[Piru]

Plug it in a PC and use the utility provided by the HW manufacturer.

[orange]

if you don't like opening the PC, you can use the cheap USB IDE hard rack. They should still be easy to find, even though there are SATA racks.

I used it to check and partition CF cards with WinUAE.

[Piru]

@orange

Some of these HDD checking tools use quite low level access to the HW however, they might not work over USB.

[Claw22000]

I'm using USB to make this drive for my A1200.  I'm backing it all up now for easy restore.  Just got a few errors while updating a couple games and want to make sure nothing is messed up before operating on my baby.

If theres a tool great if not I guess I will have to hope all is well.

[murple]

Well, a bad drive is unlikely to damage your Amiga. You might lose files, but assuming you've got backups, all you'd have to do is replace the disk. I don't see any way a bad drive would make you have to replace your A1200 unless you somehow get an exploding disk haha.

Either put it in a PC if you want to do some kind of really in depth low level testing (in over 20 years, I've never found any reason to need to do that) or hook it up to your Amiga and run some test software. I think DiskSalv has a bunch of testing options.

[Claw22000]

I put it in and its working fine.  I now have a 60 Gig DRIVE!!! YES Thomas is awesome if this board had the bowing smily I would fill the screen with it.  The new drive is so quiet you can't hear it running at all!!!

[murple]

60 gig on an Amiga? I thought the IDE controller in a 1200 can only handle 4 gig?

[Claw22000]

Thats actully (If I understand what I did correctly) only a limitation of the 3.1 ROM.  Which can be bypassed with about (if you have done it before) 10 minutes worth of work.  

Basically you setup the first part of the drive by only using 4 or less gigs.  preferably with a setup like this...

first partiotion DH0: 500MB or less
Second Partition DH1: 3.5G or less
third partition  DH2: rest of the drive.

And then you can load a module that overlays on the Roms limitation in the first partition and also update a file system in the RDB I think it was called.  Theirs a Post from Thomas on here that has the complete instructions.  

 Click here for instructions.

Wish the mods would have sticky-ed that its a great information page by Thomas and I even through in 1 useful thing myself.  Not terribly usefully unless you have Vista but still there to help.