Yet Another HDD thread

[rvo_nl]

I feel a little embarrassed with Thomas lurking around here, but I seem to have forgotten how I installed my 120Gb HD in my main Amiga. Now I need to install a 2.5 and a 3.5 (both >8GB) in 2 other A1200's, and I have forgotten how!

Right then, silly questions mode activated..

They both have 3.0 kickstart roms, and no IDE-Fix Express or similar. They do recognise the drives well, but the default HDToolbox from WB3.1 doesnt recognise the full size of the drives, naturally.

A) Is there any way to get the default HDToolbox to do so? I've tried running FixHddSize from Thomas, but that didnt work as expected. (I do not wish to go the blizkick or maprom route, I need to keep these machines as fool-proof as possible)

B) In case I stick with the 8Gb that both drives do recognise (Im not sure if FixHddSize helped here, quite possibly it did), can I stick with default FFS and never look back? I mean, can I just partition and format the drives for 8Gb (2x4Gb) using the default HdToolBox?

C) Is there any way to use more than 8Gb without using blizkick/maprom/OS3.9/Ide-Fix Express? Before I didnt even doubt this, but I've seen several threads where it seems it was possible to get the complete size of the drive using a 4Gb boot partition, running Ide-Fix / diskchange and SFS. I have no idea how to do this, all my attempts so far have failed.

I feel like a beginner here, I cant stand not being able to remember how I got my main machine installed, but that one has an IDE-Fix Express and 3.1 roms, and CD-rom (thus OS3.9) so I assume it was easier. It's very frustrating.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

You don't mention alternate file systems, but If you switch to PFS or SFS file system I believe they'd let you use the entire capacity of the drive and AFAIK they work under 3.1/3.0. You might have problems with some older software if it tries to write to partition space beyond what the Amiga could normally address, however.

Probably best to wait for a more complete answer from Thomas.

Edit: nevermind, I see you did mention SFS.  D'oh!

[Thomas]

Firstly by no way you can stay with default FFS. Although HDToolbox shows you 8GB, FFS can only access the first 4GB of it. If you create a partition in the second half of the 8GB, it will appear to work at first but actually it shares its space with other partitions inside the first half. These partitions will overwrite each other. If you write a file to one partition it will cause corruption on another partition and vice versa. So FFS <= V40 is a no-go unless you carefully keep everything inside the first 4GB of the drive.

To use the full 8GB you have to use a file system which uses HD_SCSICMD a.k.a. Direct-SCSI. Your choices are PFS3ds, PFS3aio, SFS <= V1.84 or FFS V44.

In order to use more than 8GB you have to replace scsi.device by a new version. Because scsi.device is hard-coded in the Kickstart ROM, the only way to replace it by software is to load it into memory and reboot to activate it. This means the first boot will last a lot longer because all the hardware is enumerated twice.

Regarding HDToolbox, it will do everything right for you, as long as you ignore the numbers it shows. It will only ever show numbers below 4GB. So a 15.9 GB partition will be shown as 3.9GB and a 16.1 GB partition will be shown as 0.1 GB. But this is only the GUI. The partitions themselves are correct.

FixHDDSize can only work with a new scsi.device. 8GB is not a limit of HDToolbox but of scsi.device and thus also limits FixHDDSize.

[rvo_nl]

Hi Thomas, thanks so much again. You must be getting tired by these questions, but for most people this really is confusing material. But I think you've cleared up a lot of my confusion now. Let me recap:

Like I said, I dont want an extra reboot, so Im going to use HDToolBox to partition my drive with SFS 1.84. I will be stuck with 8Gb this way, which is not too bad anyway.

In case I change my mind, I will use blizkick to patch scsi.device and install the latest SFS on all partitions except the first one, which will probably become a 100Mb FFS boot partition like I did on my other system. At that point I will make use of FixHddSize to get the right numbers into HdToolBox.

All good?

[Thomas]

I'll never understands why people so much like to make slow boot partitions. The boot process benefits most from a fast file system. Using PFS3 on the boot partition makes your Amiga boot much faster than with FFS. SFS is somewhere in between, but still faster than FFS. Actually there is no reason to have any partition with FFS, the least for the boot partition.

[rvo_nl]

It's quite simple: because people that are not 100% comfortable with what they're doing, tend to go for the safest route. And since Workbench shipped with FFS, that's for many people an indication.
 
 For the machines I'm working on now, I dont care much about fast booting, since they are being build as whdload machines. My main machine has indeed a 3.1 FFS boot partition, but that is really only asking me whether to boot 3.9 or 4.1. After that it is SFS all the way. I've had some bad experiences with PFS3 in the past, so I tend not to go that route.
 
 Anyway, despite your disapproval of FFS, I'm glad I can get started Thanks.

[utri007]

Recently I reformated both of my A1200 Computers from SFS to FFS.

Yes SFS is faster, more reliable, but if something goes wrong you can't do anything. FFS is always fixable, never let you down.

[mechy]

It's quite simple: because people that are not 100% comfortable with what they're doing, tend to go for the safest route. And since Workbench shipped with FFS, that's for many people an indication.
 
 For the machines I'm working on now, I dont care much about fast booting, since they are being build as whdload machines. My main machine has indeed a 3.1 FFS boot partition, but that is really only asking me whether to boot 3.9 or 4.1. After that it is SFS all the way. I've had some bad experiences with PFS3 in the past, so I tend not to go that route.
 
 Anyway, despite your disapproval of FFS, I'm glad I can get started Thanks.

If anything FFS is not safe. It suffers from auto validation and is horribly slow.FFS is easier to corrupt in my experience than sfs.
keep the boot partition under 2Gb and make it SFS, its completely reliable and compatible. Also, sfs2.79 is the latest,and sfs2.77 archive has a bunch of useful tools. not sure why you are using 1.84, although it will work ok.

[mechy]

Recently I reformated both of my A1200 Computers from SFS to FFS.

Yes SFS is faster, more reliable, but if something goes wrong you can't do anything. FFS is always fixable, never let you down.

There is sfssalv for recovery. why would you change to sfs if you claim it is more reliable? as long as you stick with sfs/0 its recoverable,sfs/2 is not.
you can use 1.279 found here(look at 1.277 archive for tools).

I was going to give a link to the 2 archives but it seems http://strohmayer.org/ is not around anymore?

EDIT: seems you can get to them here: strohmayer.org/sfs/files/SFS_1.279_68k.lha
and strohmayer.org/sfs/files/SFS_1.277_68k.lha

[klx300r]

@ Thomas

honestly, I've said this in the past but your depth of knowledge on AmigaOS in general is mind boggling! I forget what I did last week and the stuff you remember is wow, this site should give you a reward  :hammer:

[rvo_nl]

keep the boot partition under 2Gb and make it SFS, its completely reliable and compatible. Also, sfs2.79 is the latest,and sfs2.77 archive has a bunch of useful tools. not sure why you are using 1.84, although it will work ok.

Im still in doubt.. but thanks for your advise. Im using 1.84 because that is the last version that supports hard drive partitioning up to 8Gb without the extra reboot to load a patched scsi.device

[orange]

sorry to start this again.
is there a way to overcome the 128Gb limit on builtin IDE?

[Thomas]

Yes, you need OS 3.9, Boingbag 2 and the fix for the LBA48 implementation.

http://aminet.net/package/driver/media/SCSI4345p
or
http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=405413&postcount=1

[orange]

Yes, you need OS 3.9, Boingbag 2 and the fix for the LBA48 implementation.

http://aminet.net/package/driver/media/SCSI4345p
or
http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=405413&postcount=1

excellent, thanks Thomas.

it seems I'm stuck, trying to find 'extractmodule'.
LoadModule.lha from aminet is missing it, and the one in ShellUpdate.lha complains 'object too large' ?

edit:
I think I've managed to extract the module (using 'ExtractModule MODULE 5 ...' instead), but now spatch complains 'incorrect version of original file'

edit2:
seems I haven't installed BB2 properly, oh well.

[Thomas]

You should use romupdatesplit from the BlizKick package. Then you don't need to count module numbers but get the modules by name and Amiga model.

Even if you selected not to install the ROM update with BB2, you got it copied to Devs: anyway. Just select the right file to split, the biggest one. IIRC it's called Amiga OS ROM Update-BB2 or something like that.