Partitioning a real drive with WUAE and OS3.9

[soulboy]

Hi am trying to partition a 60gb hard drive from win uae with AmigsOS3.9 installed. As far as I can work out OS3.9 allows large disks and partitions greater than anything on my drive. I tried to create a 1.9gb boot partition and two other partitions of equal size filling the rest of the drive. HDToolBox seems to accept the settings when I hit save but when I close HDToolBox there is one unformatted partition too many and sure enough when I open HDToolBox sure enough 4 partitions instead of 3. What am I missing here ? Is OS3.9 capable of 60gb disks with 27gb partitions ?

[Thomas]

When using Vista or Win7 you should disconnect and reconnect the drive after running HDToolbox for the first time, otherwise changes might not be saved to the drive.

Actually you should first clean the drive with DiskPart before you use it in WinUAE, then you can be sure that Windows knows that it is empty and keeps its fingers from it.

[soulboy]

When using Vista or Win7 you should disconnect and reconnect the drive after running HDToolbox for the first time, otherwise changes might not be saved to the drive.

Actually you should first clean the drive with DiskPart before you use it in WinUAE, then you can be sure that Windows knows that it is empty and keeps its fingers from it.

Well I am running XP but I tried both things anyway and it appears to have given me two partitions this time which I was what I tried to do! Thanks

[soulboy]

Ok it appeared to partition and format ok but when it completed it seems that the large partions used size is reported:

24% full, 0B free, 53.9GB in use.

When actually there is nothing in that partition.

If I try to create a directory in that partition from the shell it says

Volume is not validaded.

I tried restarting winuae but its still the same. I guess there is some limitation here.

Gareth

[Thomas]

Volume is not validaded.

There are two possible causes for this:

1. the partition is really too big for the version of FastFileSystem you use. You could try to increase the file system block size to bypass this.

2. you have not enough memory. Big partitions need a huge amount of memory at some point. It probably tries to generate the entire bitmap in memory before it stores it on disk. I have experienced that you need at least 8 MB of memory to format a 8GB partition. So for a 60 GB partition you might need at least 60 MB of memory.

Increasing the file system block size might help here, too, because it lowers the size of the bitmap.

Have you considered using SFS instead of FFS ?

[soulboy]

Well I am using the default FFS from 3.9 from what I read on various forums I was under the impression, but not totally sure, that it could support larger disks and partitions than this. It looks like its wrong though.

When you say large partitions need a huge about of memory do you mean during formatting or partitioning ?

Well I will check the Win-Uae memory configuration and try increasing the block size.

Yes I considered SFS but thought it easier to use the default FFS but I will try it too.

By the way I can't seem to find any instructions for installing SFS. On their site, inside the downloads. Are any instructions available ?

G

[soulboy]

I am having worse problems using SFS. I assume all you do to install it is copy it too the L directory right ? The problems I am having is the first partition I create doesnt show up on the workbench (which is new) and it still creates an extra partition at the end which I didn't ask for.

Also I am confused because when I click on "change" in HDToolBox I can only select "Custom File System" or "CFS/00" I assume these to mean SmartFileSystem because when I click on "Add/Update" in HDToolBox it shows SmartFileSystem as
"SmartFileSystem [Custom File System CFS/00]" Which one should I select ?

I would also like to know should I mix file systems in different paritions or keep them all the same ?

Thanks

[Thomas]

Instructions should be in the "full archive with tools and docs". http://strohmayer.org/

You should use SFS/00 for SmartFileSystem. CFS/00 means "stupid user sitting behind the keyboard". ;-)

[soulboy]

Well I looked in that archive before and maybe I am missing something but I can't find anything about installation.

Unfortunately in  there is no SFS/00 to select under change->file system in HDToolBox. Thats why I tried CFS/00.

G

[Thomas]

Go to Add/Update, remove the SmartFileSystem entry, click on Add and select the file (L:SmartFileSystem). Now a window appears where you can overwrite the identifier and version information. Overtype 43465300 by 53465300 and press enter. If you now go back to Change, you should have SFS/00 in the list.

The numbers are hexadecimal representations of ASCII values:

43 = C
46 = F
53 = S
00 = non-printable character

Therefore 43465300 stands for CFS/00 and 53465300 stands for SFS/00.

The section to read is in SFS_OLD.guide -> Installation -> Making SFS available for use.

The same procedure applies to every file system, only the identifier is different.

Likewise

44 = D
4F = O
53 = S

for the Amiga file system. The last byte determines the extra features:

01 = FastFileSystem
03 = FastFileSystem International
05 = FastFileSystem International + Directory Cache
07 = FastFileSystem with long file names (new in OS 4.0)

[Gavilan]

@soulboy: you may try this tutorial. I think it can be of much help, not only to you, but to other members here as well: http://amibay.com/showthread.php?t=4142

Oh, and always listen to Thomas suggestions!!! The man KNOWS A LOT about all this stuff

Sebastian

[A4000_Mad]

Go to Add/Update, remove the SmartFileSystem entry, click on Add and select the file (L:SmartFileSystem). Now a window appears where you can overwrite the identifier and version information. Overtype 43465300 by 53465300 and press enter. If you now go back to Change, you should have SFS/00 in the list.

The numbers are hexadecimal representations of ASCII values:

43 = C
46 = F
53 = S
00 = non-printable character

Therefore 43465300 stands for CFS/00 and 53465300 stands for SFS/00.

The section to read is in SFS_OLD.guide -> Installation -> Making SFS available for use.

The same procedure applies to every file system, only the identifier is different.

Likewise

44 = D
4F = O
53 = S

for the Amiga file system. The last byte determines the extra features:

01 = FastFileSystem
03 = FastFileSystem International
05 = FastFileSystem International + Directory Cache
07 = FastFileSystem with long file names (new in OS 4.0)

That's really interesting stuff thanks Thomas

__̴ı̴̴̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡*̡̡ ̴̡ı̴̴̡ ̡̡͡|̲̲̲͡͡͡ ̲▫̲͡ ̲̲̲͡͡π̲̲͡͡ ̲̲͡▫̲̲͡͡ ̲|̡̡̡ ̡ ̴̡ı̴̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡̡.__

.

[soulboy]

Go to Add/Update, remove the SmartFileSystem entry, click on Add and select the file (L:SmartFileSystem). Now a window appears where you can overwrite the identifier and version information. Overtype 43465300 by 53465300 and press enter. If you now go back to Change, you should have SFS/00 in the list.

Thanks for the information!

Ok I did this and managed to use SFS/00 but I STILL get the extra partition at the end of this disk which I didn't ask for.

I created  DH0, DH1, DH2, DH3 but on the Workbench I see all those but I also get DH1_0 which I didn't configure. Its right and the end of the disk and is 8073mb. The other strange thing is after DH0-DH3 there is :Uninitialised but after DH1_: there are corrupted characters.

Another thing is when I then go back into HDToolBox it displays the extra partition but when I click on it both that partition and DH3 are selected as if they are one partition and not 2. Strange.

Might be some limitation with HDToolBox?

G

[soulboy]

@soulboy: you may try this tutorial. I think it can be of much help, not only to you, but to other members here as well: http://amibay.com/showthread.php?t=4142

Oh, and always listen to Thomas suggestions!!! The man KNOWS A LOT about all this stuff

Sebastian

I am listening to Thomas and appreciate his help!!!

Ok I will read through the tutorial thanks.

G

[Thomas]

Another thing is when I then go back into HDToolBox it displays the extra partition but when I click on it both that partition and DH3 are selected as if they are one partition and not 2. Strange.

This sounds like a bug in HDToolbox. I have heard that HDtoolbox sometimes creates overlapping partitions, but I never experienced it myself.

How did you start partitioning the HDD ? Did you choose one of the standard setups (1, 2, 4, 8 partitons) and then moved around the partitions HDToolbox created or did you delete all pre-installed partitions and created your own ones one after the other ?

Can you delete all partitions (except the first one if it's already filled with files), save the changes and then check what HDToolbox shows ? Can you delete the dh1_0 partition ?

If you don't get it sorted, please install tsgui, run it, select one partition of your hdd and choose "save RDB to file" from the menu. Attach the resulting file here or send it to me by e-mail, then I can examine and repair it.

Bye,
Thomas