Most bullet-proof drive solution?

[Heiroglyph]

For desktop (mostly development, so lots of writes) use on either a 4000D or 4000T, what is the most reliable, but still fast drive configuration to use?

Preferably one that avoids as many drive size issues as possible, with any known connection type, I'll buy whatever I need to.

OS3.1 with what patches? 3.5? 3.9?
IDE, SCSI, USB, other?
Built-in controller?  Add on controller?
CF vs. thumb drive vs traditional spinning platters?
Can you constantly write to CF without wearing out the drive?
Do I need to use only tiny 2-4GB drives?
What filesystem?
Partition sizes?

I just want to stop worrying about errors, data loss and lockups, it's killing the fun of using the system.

Thanks!

[the_leander]

I would have thought something like a couple of high speed compact flash cards, one to use and the other as a backup (maybe with a script to periodically sync the two) would be your best bet.

[Crumb]

For desktop (mostly development, so lots of writes) use on either a 4000D or 4000T, what is the most reliable, but still fast drive configuration to use?

First of all I wouldn't use old 4GB drives because these are prone to errors due to their age... many of them are 13 years old. CF is said to work well and although it's supposed to degrade with writtings but I guess you'll be able to use it happily a lot of time.

Built in scsi driver will recognize without problems the first 4GB so play safe and create the OS partitions in the first 4GB. If you use a big disk make for example 4 900MB FFS partitions then create your "WORK" partition starting from the 5th GB. That way you can be 100% sure you won't overwrite the contents because if the updated scsi driver that allows accessing more than 4GB is not loaded you won't see work so no problems. You could run into problems if your partition is between the first 4GB and the next GBs.

on A4000T on board scsi works great. It's reliable but if you are unsure about you scsi configuration skills you'd better go for an IDE*drive or simply get a proper cable with proper termination.

It doesn't matter much if you use 3.1, 3.5 or 3.9 but you should have up to date scsi.device&FileSystem.resource, FastFileSystem... you can load the modules you require with Blizzkick.

If you want the easiest: <4GB IDE*CF drive with 3.1. But only if you are really paranoid.

Avoid Zorro hard disk controllers. Use accelerator controller or motherboard controller but not crappy ZorroII ones. ZorroIII ones like cbm one or Fastlane... well... get an accelerator and forget about them.

If I were you I would get a scsi-ide (or scsi-sata) adapter and make good use of the built in scsi controller.

Keep in mind that 3.9 updated scsi.devices are buggy and limited to 128GB, if you want to use more you'll have to update it. It also affects real scsi controller on A4000T so if you want to avoid problems use a 120GB*drive. These are getting old too but 4GB*ones are worse :-)

[Heiroglyph]

I would have thought something like a couple of high speed compact flash cards, one to use and the other as a backup (maybe with a script to periodically sync the two) would be your best bet.

My issue is read/write errors, I've been plagued with them.

I can't get through compiling something without either a lockup or an error, but anything that hits the drives hard like copying files will cause it.

As it stands, I'd likely corrupt my backup by backing up.

So I'm basically picking people's brains on exactly what is reliable in as much detail as possible.

[nicholas]

I use an SDHC Card fitted to an IDE Adapter, which in turn is connected to an IDE to SCSI bridge, which in turn is fitted to my CyberSCSI Mk2.

It works nice and fast, silent and stable too.

You might want to use PFS too.

[Iggy]

I use an SDHC Card fitted to an IDE Adapter, which in turn is connected to an IDE to SCSI bridge, which in turn is fitted to my CyberSCSI Mk2.

It works nice and fast, silent and stable too.

You might want to use PFS too.

That's the first recommendation I've heard for SDHC. Others have told me its less reliable then Compact Flash.
Thanks Nicholas. I think I might like to try something like that on my Powermac.

[the_leander]

My issue is read/write errors, I've been plagued with them.

I can't get through compiling something without either a lockup or an error, but anything that hits the drives hard like copying files will cause it.

As it stands, I'd likely corrupt my backup by backing up.

So I'm basically picking people's brains on exactly what is reliable in as much detail as possible.

Are you sure you're setting the right data rates for the device? IIRC if you had them set too high all you got was errors on mechanical drives, I can't imagine it being any different for solid state.

For ultimate reliability mirrored raid would be your best bet. Along with hot backups on external drives, online sources such as box.net and then of course optical media is useful as a backup solution.

-edit-

Also, be careful about what brands of CF cards you get, they're not created equally.

[Heiroglyph]

That is very helpful, you said several things I was unaware of.

First of all I wouldn't use old 4GB drives because these are prone to errors due to their age... many of them are 13 years old.

I've avoided this, but that puts me into huge (in Amiga terms) drives in most cases.

CF is said to work well and although it's supposed to degrade with writtings but I guess you'll be able to use it happily a lot of time.

By degrade, do you mean slower, or r/w errors?

Built in scsi driver will recognize without problems the first 4GB so play safe and create the OS partitions in the first 4GB. If you use a big disk make for example 4 900MB FFS partitions then create your "WORK" partition starting from the 5th GB. That way you can be 100% sure you won't overwrite the contents because if the updated scsi driver that allows accessing more than 4GB is not loaded you won't see work so no problems. You could run into problems if your partition is between the first 4GB and the next GBs.

What I've been doing with any drive is not using a full 4GB, period.  I'm wasting practically the entire drive.

This is a very scary subject.  Can I use my Deneb card to boot with the updates already in place from the start?

on A4000T on board scsi works great. It's reliable but if you are unsure about you scsi configuration skills you'd better go for an IDE*drive or simply get a proper cable with proper termination.

That's good to hear, although it doesn't play nice with my Deneb if DMA is enabled.

I'm confident with SCSI and willing to buy new cables and active terminators just to be sure.

I'm just about to buy one of the GVP 4060-DT's from Software Hut assuming they still have them (I think I may have had some CPU card issues)

Is that controller reliable?

It doesn't matter much if you use 3.1, 3.5 or 3.9 but you should have up to date scsi.device&FileSystem.resource, FastFileSystem... you can load the modules you require with Blizzkick.

If you want the easiest: <4GB IDE*CF drive with 3.1. But only if you are really paranoid.

I'm pretty paranoid at this point, like I said, I'm not using a full 4GB with 3.9 on SCSI, IDE and USB right now and they are all disastrously bad.

Avoid Zorro hard disk controllers. Use accelerator controller or motherboard controller but not crappy ZorroII ones. ZorroIII ones like cbm one or Fastlane... well... get an accelerator and forget about them.

If I were you I would get a scsi-ide (or scsi-sata) adapter and make good use of the built in scsi controller.

Keep in mind that 3.9 updated scsi.devices are buggy and limited to 128GB, if you want to use more you'll have to update it. It also affects real scsi controller on A4000T so if you want to avoid problems use a 120GB*drive. These are getting old too but 4GB*ones are worse :-)

What scsi.device do you suggest using for the onboard 4000T?  I assumed 3.9 was the good stuff and that tweaking all the devices and libs would be a bad idea.  Sometimes you can tweak them into instability, you know?

Do you know what I should use for the GVP 4060?

Thanks for the details, this is great.

[Heiroglyph]

Are you sure you're setting the right data rates for the device? IIRC if you had them set too high all you got was errors on mechanical drives, I can't imagine it being any different for solid state.

For ultimate reliability mirrored raid would be your best bet. Along with hot backups on external drives, online sources such as box.net and then of course optical media is useful as a backup solution.

-edit-

Also, be careful about what brands of CF cards you get, they're not created equally.

I've been aware of the max transfer and mask and tried to set them correctly.

I've seen several options proposed that were similar, but not quite the same.  So far none of them have cleared up my problems, but I wouldn't rule it out.

It's a situation where I thought I knew what I was doing, it's just not quite working as expected, so I don't really trust anything I think I know at this point.

It's networked to my server, so I could back up to there.  I still need to see if an svn client is available for Amiga too, I just haven't made it far enough to need it yet.

[Heiroglyph]

I use an SDHC Card fitted to an IDE Adapter, which in turn is connected to an IDE to SCSI bridge, which in turn is fitted to my CyberSCSI Mk2.

It works nice and fast, silent and stable too.

You might want to use PFS too.

All those adapters seem pretty scary, but if it works...

I tried an IDE to SATA but I can't get it to recognize on any of my systems.  Probably just not a compatible adapter.

I did give SFS a shot, that didn't work out any better than FFS from what I could tell.  If anything went wrong, I had trouble accessing the drive too.

Is PFS more reliable?  Is it painful to set up?

[the_leander]

Ok, so what do you have now, and what are their symptoms?

Without knowing what's going on with your system atm, anything suggested could only exacerbate the issues you're suffering with, not to mention make it harder to pin down their causes.

On the basics, platters will last longer before developing errors, but are slower and difficult to find in "low" capacities, especially new. Solid state such as SDHC and CF are readily available but tend to give up much more quickly than traditional platters unless you're paying out serious bank. USB.... Just don't go there unless you have to as far as booting goes, it'll slow your system down due to all the interrupts created during transfers and really offers you nothing over what you'd get with either CF or SDHC.

[Xanxi]

I do not agree.
I have trashed at least 3 CF using them on my amiga computers.
Real hard drives are more reliable than CF. Never had a real problem with a HD on amiga in the last 15 years.

[Heiroglyph]

Ok, so what do you have now, and what are their symptoms?

Without knowing what's going on with your system atm, anything suggested could only exacerbate the issues you're suffering with, not to mention make it harder to pin down their causes.

On the basics, platters will last longer before developing errors, but are slower and difficult to find in "low" capacities, especially new. Solid state such as SDHC and CF are readily available but tend to give up much more quickly than traditional platters unless you're paying out serious bank. USB.... Just don't go there unless you have to as far as booting goes, it'll slow your system down due to all the interrupts created during transfers and really offers you nothing over what you'd get with either CF or SDHC.

I've tried a multitude, so just combine these options...
A4000T scsi
A4000T ide
A4000D ide
Quickpak 060 desktop version with scsi
Warp Engine 3040 scsi
Deneb USB (DMA and PIO, ZIII and ZII)
Misc. ide drives, 120GB-200GB
Misc. scsi drives, 9GB-72GB
4GB USB thumb drives
USB-sata enclosures with 80-250GB 2.5" and 3.5" drives
Normally a ~1.7GB or less System, no more than 1.7GB Work.

The constant has been OS3.9.  As I said, I thought this was the gold standard, newest to use with fixes for drive capacity.

This was in 5 Amigas (3 4kD, 2 4kT) with 3 CPU and SCSI cards.

Closest yet was the Warp Engine SCSI.  It copied far more files without issue, from one old scsi drive to another new SCSI, but it's seems to have developed RAM and heat issues.

The Warp Engine HD also included an OS3.9 that was NOT installed by me.  I have no idea what was done to it.

I fear screwing up that drive by installing my 060 and other libraries on it so I duplicated it and tried with two other controllers and CPU cards with no better results.

Of them all, the Deneb/thumbdrive combo felt fastest in use, but was no more reliable.

I'll take stable over fast BTW.

[tone007]

I've never had any problems on A500s, A600s, A1200s, A3000/Ts, A4000/Ts with plain old <4GB hard drives, SCSI or IDE.  Of course, I've never bothered with a Deneb either.

I did have a couple of issues with CF on an A1200, though for the most part it worked well enough also.  I wouldn't bother with it in a case that has room for a real hard drive, though.

[Heiroglyph]

Other than ancient drives, thumb drives or CF's, I don't know where to find a 4GB or less drive period.

Since I'm using less than 4GB of the drives, can this even be the issue?