os3.1 format of 4.3 gig drive = disaster

[T3000]

This is why I tossed the Amigas in the closet a couple of years ago.

I had replaced the failed 1gig HD in the 3000D/Warp40/Picassoll with a new 4.3 Seagate. Installed 3.1, partitioned and formatted the drive, Then installed the then new os3.5.
Ever since I have had checksum errors and missing partitions.

Mighty frustrating losing the HD contents over and over. I was doing back-ups almost every week. Spent more time sweating over the stability of the system than doing any actual work.

Stacked the crap in the corner and finished building the Athlon. Three years and few improvements later, still no problems. If the Amiga os was half of what Windowz98 is, well it would make it Amiga OS/49.   :-D

Any way, I have unpiled the Amigas and wanted to once again torture myself in hopes of resurrecting these darn fine machines. For what they are worth anyway...


Will an installation of PFS2 cure the checksum errors. (I spent $45 for it at AmiWest a few years back. Actually, I spent quite a few $ that weekend on all kinds of stuff.)  Or should I install os3.1 on a smaller drive first, Get the system running under os3.5 then add the 4.3 gig. Format the 4.3gig with os3.5 then install programs. Or just format and partition the 4.3 gig drive under os3.5 and reinstall everything forgetting PFS2.

And no, I'm not gonna buy os4.

Thanks.

[Jope]

Well, install PFS2 and see.

You didn't mention how big partitions you used for the 4.3 and also whether 4.3 was what the computer sees or what's written on top of the drive.

The original Amiga scsi.device will wrap at 4096 megabytes, and if you use FFS, your maximum partition size should be 2GB.

The PFS2 direct scsi version cures both these problems, but if you want to play it safe, you might want to have a smaller boot partition (say 300MB?) and then store everything else on the bigger partition(s).

Oh, and always quick format your hard drive partitions..

[Glaucus]

How do you know it's not a bad hard drive or bad cable??? That's what I would suspect.

  - Mike

[PMC]

Yeah, that brings back happy memories of losing all my work and having to restore everything from floppies!

The cabling / drive issue is well worth checking out.  If you're using a straight 40 - 44 Pin ribbon cable then you might want to replace it as they're not that robust in my experience.  If you've got a bufferred interface then there may be an issue there.

Other things to consider are whether the drive is being fully formatted or quick formatted.  The former takes time but sorts out a lot of problems.  Max Transfer settings in the HDToolbox menu make a difference too.

[Thomas]

Well, checksum errors on one partition after writing to another one or total loss of all partitions after writing to the disk clearly points to the 4GB problem.

PFS2ds might help here but PFS2 is not as stable as PFS3.

You should create an OS3.5 emergency disk, boot from it and reinstall the whole HDD with the new HDtoolBox. Make sure it uses the new FastFileSystem version 44. After that the data beyond the 4GB limit should be accessible and checksum errors should be gone.

If you fear the trouble you may also calculate where the 4GB border of your HDD is and leave the upper part of it free (without partitions). For 0.3GB out of 4.3GB this might be worth it.

However, there is the archive Check4GB on Aminet which will help you to check if everything is set up correctly.

Bye,
Thomas

[T3000]

OK.
I think I found the checksum problems...
When I query the drive from 3.5 HDToolBox it shows that the drive is not installed.
The 4.3 HD is formatted from the original 3.1 install disks. I guess I should have partitioned and formatted with the 3.5 emergency boot disk then installed 3.1/3.5 from the 3.5 CD.

What a mess...

[SnowBord]

when ure done drop a couple of f's from the max transfer rate.

[Framiga]

Hi T3000,

and use SFS lastversion from Aminet.

PFS2 is highly unstable and bugged.

Ciao

[leirbag28]

Well I just installed a 40GB laptop HD in my SX32Pro..using OS3.9..............I recommend you get it but make at least 2 Boot Partitions............one for WB3.1 and one for 3.9.... at least it will cure your 4gig barrier problem. Then whenever you want you can boot from OS3.1....................I don't recommend using it to save anything.........cuz that problem might start again............I do all my work in OS3.9 and save it..........then reboot when I want to run stuff with OS3.1 for compatibility issues............I am not yet satisfied with OS3.9...so I consider myself to be testing it............

Anyway. Get it!

[leirbag28]

Oops!  actually you should make like 4 Partitions if it is a 4.3gb HD or even 5 partitions..one for OS3.9 another for OS3.1.another for Work: and another for Work2:

[A4kT]

You say that the drive is 4.1 gig. Just about every Amiga user knows about the 4 gig limit under FFS up until OS3.5 / OS3.9
PFS2 can maybe still be updated to PFS3 from the site - haven't got the URL There should be some  URL info on the CD.
Setting up Amigas using SCSI and PFS2/3 is not for the ordinary Windows user, far too challenging. The reward in configuring an Amiga is that you control it, it doesn't control you - as in Windows.
Definitely make a small boot partitiion (100mb - 300mb) and go for the direct SCSI option in PFS.
Use the hard drive setup program that comes with PFS
Set 200 buffers for the boot partition.
Format the drive using "PFS Format" (usually gets installed in the "C" directory) using the Amiga CLI (DO NOT USE THE AMIGA FORMAT COMMAND)
The easiest way is to copy PFS Format to ram from "C" then open a cli window and input....   ram:pfsformat ?  (the space is important
The result will show your formatting options.
I use the following in PFS3..
ram:pfsformat DRIVE dh0: NAME dh0 VERIFY
Don't use the Amiga format command.
Also, VERY IMPORTANT read the PFS docs on setting the FILESYSTEM in the hard drive setup, I think it is something like "PFS\03" must be either selected from the list OR typed in, forgotten for the moment. ( I'm on the net on my Mac nowt.)

Most important is to really get into the PFS documentation.
I have two 9 gig UW-SCSI drives conencted to the SCSI bus in an A4000T
the only time I have had any trouble with PFS is when I added an extra partition for ShapeShifter AFTER I had formatted the drive and installed OS3.1

PFSDoctor seems to be a bit flakey, I do not use it at all.

PFS is notably faster from startup. The A4000T (060) boots up cold in 25 seconds.

Hope this helps.