File system to support 8 Gb Flash card?

[superfrog76]

Hi gents,

I have just purchased a 8 Gb CF card and adapter, so I can allow my 500 Mb internal hard drive to retire permanently.

Also I have a spanking new copy of 3.9 (was a good deal, a bag of original software with boxes and manuals, altho I bet that less than half will work, other than the cd's)

Altho I have discovered the pain of using an ancient file system (I have 3.1 installed); once that I have installed 3.1 from the disks on the CF card; the os got corrupted.

After researching a bit, I've discovered that the max size of a supported disk is 2 GB, with the 3.1 file system, and that the OS partition must be at the beginning of the disk, in a partition of less than a Gb.

Now my question is: what should I put on the CF card, to support the whole capacity? As now I am using the FFS I guess (the one with 3.1), I have 1 partition for WB (400 Mb), and 1.5 Gb partitions for the rest of the 8 Gb.

I've already wasted an hour installing and realized that at random, the OS write at the beginning of the disk, corrupting the WB partition, so I want to put on the disk something that works reliably.

If I install 3.9, will resolve the problem? (not sure what 3.9 uses as file system), if not, which FS should I put on? Would love to have a guide, if you know where to find one.

Thanks in advance!

[psxphill]

A lot of people use http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/pfs3aio
 
It should be possible to put that on the RDB so that you can use it for your boot partition.
 
On PC's I always have one partition, but my Amiga has always had two partitions. I don't know what I would do if I was starting from scratch though.

[superfrog76]

Thanks phill, I will give it a try. I do not see any guide for it, but if the archive has a file with install instructions, I think that I can do it

So that would be better than SFS? I like that it was last modified last year, so it is not abandoned!

[Thorham]

On PC's I always have one partition

That's madness :p

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

That's madness :p

+1

Should be one partition for OS & applications, and one partition for data/documents, at a minimum.  All modern Windows OS's make it very easy to redirect the contents of "My Documents" to a drive other than C:.

[Lord Aga]

Maybe he means one drive - one partition One system drive and other(s) for storage. That's how I roll.

[psxphill]

+1
 
Should be one partition for OS & applications, and one partition for data/documents, at a minimum. All modern Windows OS's make it very easy to redirect the contents of "My Documents" to a drive other than C:.

Been there and done that, I always ended up with spare space in the program partition but out of space in the data partition. The problem gets worse the more partitions you add.
 
Multiple smaller partitions made sense on the amiga where a reboot would cause the filesystem to validate, but I'm not sure what problem you're trying to fix with multiple partitions per drive on windows.
 
With multiple drives I'd still probably try to raid0 or span them.

[Matt_H]

There are 3 issues with drives larger than 4GB. The first is scsi.device, the second is the hard drive prep utility (HDToolbox), and the third is FastFileSystem.

OS3.9 fixes all of these. If you can use 3.9's HDToolbox (which may require you making and then booting from a 3.9 Emergency Floppy), then you can prep the drive and install a filesystem that will allow you to use all 8GB. Your boot partition must be within the first 4GB of the drive, since the 3.1 ROMs need to be able to identify and boot from it in order to load the updated 3.9 modules.

If you're staying on 3.1 it gets a little harder. You need to patch scsi.device and FastFileSystem, and you need a different prep utility - I use HDInstTools in these cases.

Easiest solution? Use a 4GB Flash card instead - no patching required. It'll still be a huge upgrade from your 500MB drive.

[Tripitaka]

Maybe he means one drive - one partition One solid state system drive and NAS storage. That's how I roll.

Fixed that for ya. Aint I nice.

[Tripitaka]

Easiest solution? Use a 4GB Flash card instead - no patching required. It'll still be a huge upgrade from your 500MB drive.

+1, Matt H , you speak wisdom.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Been there and done that, I always ended up with spare space in the program partition but out of space in the data partition. The problem gets worse the more partitions you add.
 
Multiple smaller partitions made sense on the amiga where a reboot would cause the filesystem to validate, but I'm not sure what problem you're trying to fix with multiple partitions per drive on windows.
 
With multiple drives I'd still probably try to raid0 or span them.

Not necessarily a "problem trying to fix", as it is a documents management and organization solution.  Need to back up your data?  Just click "backup D:" or where ever, no mucking about picking specific data directories on C:.  Same thing with data recovery, if all your documents are stored in one partition it makes it easier to recover, also applies to defragging, etcetera.

Or maybe it just appeals more to my OCD.  

Also Windows lets you resize partitions on the fly, oftentimes without even needing a reboot.  It's not as bad an OS as some people here make it out to be, LOL.

RAID0 is great, I have two Plextor SATAIII SSD drives running in RAID0 on one of my machines and it's smokin' fast, but I wouldn't recommend it for critical data storage.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

There are 3 issues with drives larger than 4GB. The first is scsi.device, the second is the hard drive prep utility (HDToolbox), and the third is FastFileSystem.

Also there's this.  I've never used it but have heard it recommended by others:

http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/Format64-m1

[bbond007]

You could always get a 4xIDE adapter which can split the card into multiple 4GB virtual HDs..

[superfrog76]

There are 3 issues with drives larger than 4GB. The first is scsi.device, the second is the hard drive prep utility (HDToolbox), and the third is FastFileSystem.

OS3.9 fixes all of these. If you can use 3.9's HDToolbox (which may require you making and then booting from a 3.9 Emergency Floppy), then you can prep the drive and install a filesystem that will allow you to use all 8GB. Your boot partition must be within the first 4GB of the drive, since the 3.1 ROMs need to be able to identify and boot from it in order to load the updated 3.9 modules.

If you're staying on 3.1 it gets a little harder. You need to patch scsi.device and FastFileSystem, and you need a different prep utility - I use HDInstTools in these cases.

Easiest solution? Use a 4GB Flash card instead - no patching required. It'll still be a huge upgrade from your 500MB drive.

That's pretty much quick and precise info Thanks for it.

Now the questions:

If I use 3.9 emergency disk, I should have HDToolbox on it, so could I use that to prep the CF card with the new FS, but installing 3.1 and CWB? or am I forced to use 3.9?

If I can't; what is the exact sequence to do the operations that you mentioned?  From what I understand, I need first to create the first partition where the OS goes, then install 3.1. After that I need to download the new FS, and install it on the 3.1 install that I have; restart and then prep the rest of the drive to use the new FS.
Then in the end I have to erase my initial 3.1 partition, and format it with the new FS? The procedure seems quite involuted, unless I got it wrong

I have a 8 GB card, and the idea was to keep all that I need on the card, so I do not have to open and swap CF cards now and then, that's why I went for the 8 Gb, but now it doesn't seems a good idea anymore

[acadiel]

There are 3 issues with drives larger than 4GB. The first is scsi.device, the second is the hard drive prep utility (HDToolbox), and the third is FastFileSystem.

OS3.9 fixes all of these. If you can use 3.9's HDToolbox (which may require you making and then booting from a 3.9 Emergency Floppy), then you can prep the drive and install a filesystem that will allow you to use all 8GB. Your boot partition must be within the first 4GB of the drive, since the 3.1 ROMs need to be able to identify and boot from it in order to load the updated 3.9 modules.

If you're staying on 3.1 it gets a little harder. You need to patch scsi.device and FastFileSystem, and you need a different prep utility - I use HDInstTools in these cases.

Easiest solution? Use a 4GB Flash card instead - no patching required. It'll still be a huge upgrade from your 500MB drive.

I can related to this... I just used two Transcend 133X 8GB cards in a dual-CF Syba (from Amazon) case.

I have a 512MB DH0: partition on one (bootable), 3.9 fully installed with Boingbag 1, 2, & 3, and a ~7.2GB partition left as DH2: (DH1 was my DLG BBS back in day, so DH2 is habit for me.)  The third CF partition, DH3: is 7.7GB, and it's another Transcend card.

Both use FFS.  I can verify that if you do early startup, the system can only see DH0.  I'm just now getting back into the Amiga scene after not having regularly used one since around 1997 (I used my A1200 in college from 1993-1997), so I still have yet to dig through the startup-sequence and the user-startup.  Boing Bag 3 did have me run some fancy setpatch arguments.  I did my install under UAE, so I don't even know if it did the right stanza for my A1200.

From the installer for BB 3:

(if (= (exists "DEVS:scsi.device" (noreq)) 0)
         (working
          (cat "You should add these lines to the start of S:Startup-sequence:\n\n"
               "SYS:C/LoadModule L:FastFileSystem L:RAM-Handler L:Shell-Seg LIBS:icon.library LIBS:workbench.library NOREBOOT REVERSE\n\n"
               "SYS:C/SetPatch SKIPROMMODULES fs,icon,ram-handler,shell,workbench QUIET\n\n"
               "and remove the existing SetPatch line."
         ))
         ;else
         (working
          (cat "You should add these lines to the start of S:Startup-sequence:\n\n"
               "SYS:C/LoadModule L:FastFileSystem L:RAM-Handler L:Shell-Seg DEVS:scsi.device LIBS:icon.library LIBS:workbench.library NOREBOOT REVERSE\n\n"
               "SYS:C/SetPatch SKIPROMMODULES fs,icon,ram-handler,scsi.device,shell,workbench QUIET\n\n"
               "and remove the existing SetPatch line."
        )))

So, does anyone know what exactly *enables* the larger file systems in the 3.9 startup-sequence so that the system sees them?  Is it one of the setpatch commands, above?