Can't get more than 2 partitions on 16gb Flashdrive using Deneb

[save2600]

A flashback to the days when we had bad luck using greater than 4gb HD's on our Amigas. BUT... I'm running OS3.9+BB2, NSDPatch and cannot get the Deneb card to fancy the 16gb flashdrive I just bought. For starters and very odd, (HDToolBox from OS3.9) after installing and partitioning the flashdrive as an Amiga hard drive and re-boot, the NDOS: icons do not come up that would normally allow me to format and be done with it. So... I go into the CLI and manually format what I know is really there. Great, so the 1st two partitions (6gb or less total) I can get icons for, but when trying to format a partition beyond UDH1 or a larger than 5gb partition, the card pauses for a long time before I finally get the error that it's not a valid DOS disk.

I've tried editing the NSDPatch.cfg by inserting the usbscsi.device in place of some other lines. Nadda. Does something have to be inserted in startup-sequence in order for Deneb to like larger GB flash drives?

TD64 claims that usbscsi.device already supports the TD64 commands  :-(
Anyone have any other ideas?

[MozzerFan]

I never tried flashdrives larger than 1 GB with my deneb, but I do use an 80 GB usb HD, and that works like a charm.
I just partitioned and formatted the drive. Didn't have to do anything extra.

The filesystem I used is SFS.

If HDToolbox is giving you troubles, try HDInstTool instead.

An external USB HD uses the same device driver as a flashdrive, so I don't know why it shouldn't work.

*edit because of typo.*

[beller]

I used a 2 GB SD card to back up my dh0: and dh1: on my A4000 last week.  Just popped in the sd card and copied the files using DOpus...

On the other hand, I had smaller cards that just weren't recognized. I starting to think these issues are card related but then I've never seen a 16 gb flashdrive!  Largest I have is about 512 MB.

Bob

[save2600]

Thanks for the tips fellas. I tried HDinstTools and that allowed a DOS format on the partitions that HDToolBox would not, BUT even if I didn't get checksum errors... same result. Icons never pop up and even the CLI does not recognise them. It's as if my OS thinks it's an older version or something!

Monkeying around with the settings in Poseidon through all this, I even lost the ability for ANY flashdrive icons to pop up! Same with the CLI. They just don't exist anymore. I have no idea what I changed that yielded this worthless result, but it doesn't matter as that was on a different drive.

Anyway, I'm starting to think TD64, NSD, etc. needs to be flashed to the Deneb...

[MozzerFan]

Why don't you try SFS?

[save2600]

I did and found it was no smarter than FFS   :-)

Tried every combo suggested so far. Deneb or Poseidon does not want to properly deal with a flashdrive larger than 6gb apparently.

[MozzerFan]

Have you tried (full)formatting the flashdrive on a pc and reprepping the flashdrive on the amiga?

[save2600]

No PeeCee's here my friend!  But to answer your question... I have had in the past, had to format a flashdrive using the Fat system (on my Mac) before it would work on the Amiga. Getting the Amiga to recognise the flashdrive enabled it to be formatted then. ALL of the flashdrives I've ever worked with were 4gb or smaller though.

I'm currently formatting the entire 16gb flash the slow way and it seems to be taking. For now anyway. I have already gotten bad checksums on other partitions when going slow, but so far so good. I've even gone into the setup of the drive and changed values there. For instance, HDToolBox thinks this Flashdrive has 5 heads while HDInstools says 1. I rearranged the values to make more sense ala HDInstools, but not sure if that made any difference.

[MozzerFan]

BTW if you bought it through ebay, I hope you didn't get one of these.

[save2600]

ROTFLMAO! Fake memory sticks?!? What's next? lol    I purposely bought this one because it said it was a U.S. sale and the feedback was good...

ePay linky to the one I bought and might have been duped by!

[MozzerFan]

You better test it on your mac to be sure.

There is some info on the site I mentioned to test if it's fake or not.

[save2600]

-edit-

Sure enough, the full format failed too. I'm testing it on the Mac right now... stay tuned to see if I've been gypped! lol

Are the TD64 commands built into the architecture of the Deneb then? I tried placing it in the flashrom, but Poseidon speared me and said it probably wasn't a valid application or didn't have a PSDROM tag or something like that...  

[marcfrick2112]

Hey Save: I hope it works out for you... I looked at the EBay listing, I'm a little leery... First, no markings at all on the flashdrive, everyone I have ever seen has something printed on them. Second, shipping options are regular and speedpost Doesn't sound like a US seller to me, despite what the listing says.....

[platon42]

save2600 wrote:
I'm running OS3.9+BB2, NSDPatch and cannot get the Deneb card to fancy the 16gb flashdrive I just bought.

So... I go into the CLI and manually format what I know is really there. Great, so the 1st two partitions (6gb or less total) I can get icons for, but when trying to format a partition beyond UDH1 or a larger than 5gb partition, the card pauses for a long time before I finally get the error that it's not a valid DOS disk.

I've tried editing the NSDPatch.cfg by inserting the usbscsi.device in place of some other lines. Nadda. Does something have to be inserted in startup-sequence in order for Deneb to like larger GB flash drives?

TD64 claims that usbscsi.device already supports the TD64 commands  :-(
Anyone have any other ideas?

usbscsi.device supports both NSD and TD64 aswell as SCSI Direct for >4GB support. You need a filesystem that makes use either of these three. The FastFileSystem built in the standard 3.x kickstarts doesn't support any of it. Make sure you have the 3.5/3.9 rom updates in your flashrom to ensure correct operation. Adding a line in NSDPatch.cfg is not required. Drives up to 2 TeraBytes (with physical blocksize 512) are fully supported.

The Workbench/shell format program is broken in several ways and as I know, it is in all available versions. Be sure to never try to fully format a partition above the 4GB barrier -- always use the QUICK option. Anyway, full format does not make the media any better and increases the wear especially for flash drives.

I suggest using SFS with 512 byte blocksize on any drive larger than 2 GB. If you're using FFS, really make sure that you're using a block size at least of 2 KB. If the drive is even larger, 4 KB, 8 KB or even 16 KB (on really HUGE partitions) may be more appropriate.

[bash64]

Your issue lies with the NSDPatch.
Never used it, but I can tell you I did not have problems with partition sizes.
I did have the issue of the NDOS icon not appearing and having to drop to the cli to format.
The format would fail, but cannot remember why. I will look at my notes...
:-)
I was using OS 3.9 and had a 9gb scsi data drive which worked fine with no patches. Drives larger than 40gb (my memory) need a patch. Had a 160gb usb drive hooked up but had a bugger of a time getting it to work with OS 3.9 only. Thought maybe Deneb would take care of issues with massstorage.class.
 :-D