A1200 Hard Drive Problems (x2)

[r0nn13]

BACKGROUND:-
I first had a CONNOR 170MB HDD which worked perfectly. I now have a IBM 6.5GB HD formatted to the 4GB limit for WB3.1 compatibility. This works perfectly too. I have come accross 2 Hitachi DK223A-11 1080MB HDD's and they are causing me a complete headache.

PROCESS:-
1: When I boot with the WB3.1 disk there is no HDD's on screen (to be expected).

2: I do the delete old, define new SCSI HDD in the HD ToolBox. Working so far.

3: I low Level Format (or not - doesn't change the final outcome).

4: I partition (doesn't matter if I use default 50/50 or the HD Setup partition method)

5.1: If I reboot now or format the drives then reboot the outcome is exactly the same for both drives. No HDD's appear when you boot up with the Install WB3.1 disk.

5.2: If I format the drives, install WB3.1 and then reboot the system screen just goes grey and that is completely useless and then I turn off the Amiga or reboot the drives have all dissapeared.

What is going on?

PS - The drives work a treat in a PC (sorry for cursing...) so the drives work. Is it a case of wrong Hard Drives for my A1200?

PPS – I have got the HDD’s back once with a reboot. I turned my Amiga off for about 10mins (cup of tea) and the HDD’s disappeared again when I powered it up again.

[Doobrey]

Did you install a filesystem on the drive?

[ronybeck]

I take it you have tried the obvious thing which is enure that the drive is set to master.  It shouldn't make much differenct normally but then this case is not normal.  DO NOT under any circumstance lowlevel format an IDE drive.  They don't tend to work very well afterwards.

This drive sounds old.  I hope you are using an Amiga 500 Power Supply as the standard Amiga 1200 PSU's were absoulte junk and didn't supply near enough power to run a 3.5 inch.

I owned an A1200 with an 040 and a A500 PSU.  I bought a Maxtor 1Gb drive and it worked for like a week and then sudenly it stopped.  No matter what I did I couldn't get the disk to show up on boot. Chuck it in a PC, format it and away she goes.  I concluded ( although not with any real testing ) that the PSU wasnt supplying the watts to run it properly.  Just because the disk spins up doesn't mean the drive is working.

You could steal a PC psu and power it externally.  Although if you don't have one just laying about then this might be a waiste of time.  But if you do, it could dispell the PSU issue quickly.

You might also consider that neither Amiga or Hitachi DK223A-11 comply 100% with the IDE standard.  There were some LG CDROM's that had this problem and a kernel patch in linux caused these things to stop functioning.  Although this was to do with ATAPI rather than IDE.

There are so many things to consider here.  When you have done some more testing, let us all know how you went.  Perhaps you will discover some more information which will spark some ideas

Cheers

[ronybeck]

Doobrey wrote:
Did you install a filesystem on the drive?

Correct me if I am wrong. But how do you format a partition with out a filesystem?  The format can't happen unless it knows what filesystem to partion to.

Besides, the device name's of the drives should show up despite having no files system.

[r0nn13]

ronybeck wrote:
I take it you have tried the obvious thing which is ensure that the drive is set to master.

[/i]
The Hitachi is a 2.5inch 12.7mm laptop hard drive so I don't have to set it to master (correct me if I am wrong here).

ronybeck wrote:
I hope you are using an Amiga 500 Power Supply as the standard Amiga 1200 PSU's were absolute junk and didn't supply near enough power to run a 3.5 inch.

[/i]
I have switched to an A500+ PSU (my other old faithful Amiga) with the same (disappointing) results as before.

ronybeck wrote:
You might also consider that neither Amiga or Hitachi DK223A-11 comply 100% with the IDE standard. There were some LG CDROM's that had this problem and a kernel patch in linux caused these things to stop functioning. Although this was to do with ATAPI rather than IDE.

[/i]
I assume that because I have had success with 2 previous IDE 2.5inch Laptop hard drives and the Hitachi works in a PC/Laptop then they are both 100% IDE compatible (But I could be wrong).



Finally is there any other Hard Drive Prep tools available out there instead of the HDToolBox on the install disks (I have v3.0 and v3.1 and both have the same results)

[Doobrey]

ronybeck wrote:
Correct me if I am wrong. But how do you format a partition with out a filesystem?  The format can't happen unless it knows what filesystem to partion to.

Simple..
 The filesystem (FFS/PFS/SFS etc) could have been installed on another drive (HD or floppy) and then got used for formatting the new one.
 
 But you`re right,the disks icon should show up..

[amiga1260]

I have the same harddisk, but the brand is IBM. They should be the same drive. I have no problem with this hard drive. I had also the same problem with a Fijitsu notebook harddisk. But I cannot remember how I fixed it. It still working in my A1200.

You could try to download the specification of your hard drive and look if the jumpers are inserted correctly.

There is another HD prep tool called HDinsttool. You could find it on Aminet.

[pjhutch]

A few things:
1. Make sure the partition is below 4Gb (ie 4096Mb), make it smaller may help.
2. Does the drive spin up in time for AmigaOS to see it. If not then cutting line 1 in the IDE cable may help or install kickstart 3.1
3. Do you have enough power to run 3.5" drive. Do NOT use the 23W PSU with the A1200.
4. If you like try other Filesystems such as PFS3 or SFS instead of FFS.

[r0nn13]

1. Make sure the partition is below 4Gb (ie 4096Mb), make it smaller may help.
The total size is 1083MB

2. Does the drive spin up in time for AmigaOS to see it. If not then cutting line 1 in the IDE cable may help or install kickstart 3.1
KS3.1 already is installed and you can here it spinning up

3. Do you have enough power to run 3.5" drive. Do NOT use the 23W PSU with the A1200.
It is a 2.5" HD and I had a 2.5" 6.5Gb drive formatted to 4GB in there previously

4. If you like try other Filesystems such as PFS3 or SFS instead of FFS.
I have OS3.5 and OS3.9 on Original CD, given to me from a friend whose A4000 died last year. Could I use a file system from these CD's in WB3.1? If so how do you go about doing that then?

[r0nn13]

cutting line 1 in the IDE cable may help

Why would cutting the IDE cable help? Does this remove the boot priority signal or something?

*** UPDATE ***
I have managed to get 1 drive working (kind of). I bought a Laptop to PC cable/power adaptor from eBay and formatted the drive in WinXP as a Basic disk.

I put the drive back in the Amiga formatted it and installed WB3.1 on it and rebooted it a few times. Everything Ok so far. When the Amiga is left off and all power has drained from the system the HD won't boot up. I reboot a few times and it will eventually come back (sometimes after 1 reboot, and sometimes after more than 5, but it does come back).

So this means the hard drives are not faulty after all and do work for the Amiga. I don't want to cut line1 as I will be putting my 4GB drive back in when I upgrade my Amiga for OS3.5/OS3.9

Can anyone confirm what cutting line 1 actually does and if it will affect my other hard drive?

*** Further Update ***
I have tried a PSU from my A500 and it doens't change what happens.

[that_punk_guy]

r0nn13 wrote:

cutting line 1 in the IDE cable may help

Why would cutting the IDE cable help? Does this remove the boot priority signal or something?

Don't cut your IDE cable![/u]

Line one sends a reset signal to the HDD when you soft-reset the Amiga. Cutting it cures some problems with HDDs showing up on the initial boot but disappearing after the reset, but that's not what's happening here.

[that_punk_guy]

r0nn13 wrote:
2. Does the drive spin up in time for AmigaOS to see it. If not then cutting line 1 in the IDE cable may help or install kickstart 3.1
KS3.1 already is installed and you can here it spinning up

Just because you can hear it spin up, doesn't mean it has spun up fast enough for the OS to make detect it in time. However, this doesn't appear to be the problem.

3. Do you have enough power to run 3.5" drive. Do NOT use the 23W PSU with the A1200.
It is a 2.5" HD and I had a 2.5" 6.5Gb drive formatted to 4GB in there previously

An A1200 PSU should be okay, and an A500 PSU is certainly sufficient, unless you have a gigantic accelerator we don't know about.

4. If you like try other Filesystems such as PFS3 or SFS instead of FFS.
I have OS3.5 and OS3.9 on Original CD, given to me from a friend whose A4000 died last year. Could I use a file system from these CD's in WB3.1? If so how do you go about doing that then?

I would worry about that later, get it working with the standard FFS first. Messing around with that too brings too many variables into the equation.

[that_punk_guy]

Now, what you're describing - The HD being available only after a reset - would usually indicate there was a problem with the spin-up time. However, given that you have v3.1 ROMs and it's taking five resets to get the drives to show, I think something else could be causing it.

I was going to ask if you were sure the cable was good, but from the sounds of it you're using the same cable to connect this drive and the working one?

[r0nn13]

I have it down to a tee now.

I have got the second one formatted and WB3.1 installed and they are both behaving exactly the same. I switch the Amiga on from cold and it goes to the Insert Disk screen (its nice but not the result I was looking for).

You wait until the drive has reached full speed (you hear the gradually drive spin noise almost disappear as it spins at a constant rate) and then do a soft reset and hey presto an Amiga that boots its hard drive. You can soft boot until your hearts content and it boots up with the hard drive too.

It must be something to with this HDD model (Hitachi DK223A-11) and the time it takes to spin up. Is there anyway of creating a HDD boot disk that allows for the drive to spin up?

FYI - I have just installed a Viper II 68030 @ 28 Mhz with 64MB in my system (You should see Elite 2 –Frontier FLY!!!)

Am I limited by soft resetting my Amiga every time I boot the Amiga?

[that_punk_guy]

I'm amazed you got five resets in before the drive spun right up, but anyways...

Creating a boot floppy that waits for, say 15 seconds, before warm-resetting the Amiga is dead simple. I'm not really sure there's much benefit to doing that, other than to assure a non-attended boot. Depends if you really have a problem with waiting around a few seconds for the drive to spin up.

I don't think soft resets on each boot have an adverse effect. Plus, you get to see that lovely rainbow-tick screen on every boot! :-D

Regarding power, I ran a 68030 accelerator and HDD in my A1200 using an A500 PSU for about two and a half years with no problems.