Hard disk limits on a1200?

Dear all,

First post here so hello and I hope someone can help.

I have a towered A1200 who's hard drive had just died. The smallest replacement I could get was 40 GB (the old one was 2!)

it's connected via a 4 way splitter with IDEFIX - but see below. I am using os3.9

After a lot of mucking around I have been able to partition this, however I have following problems;

1. Taking the defaults gives me 4 partitions 3 of 8 gb and 1 of 5 and a bit which seems a bit odd...

2. On boot the Amiga sees the drive :) but I cannot format it. Format takes forever and then fails. I read somewhere that I can uses quick format, but how does that work? Doesn't it have to write the *whatever* on the disk, or is the Amiga clever enough not to mind - sorry it's so long since I have had to do this!

3. HD toolbox from the emergency floppy guru's on me. But does not from a borrowed small hd install (I have to give this one back!). Surly they are the same? OR is there a problem with the emergency drive taking the wrong library from somewhere?

4. Although I have a bought copy of IDEFIX it thinks its the demo, cos I have lost the registration details. Does anyone know how I can get this back? I do have A UAE install which has IDEFIX on that (it was easier than not) Which file(s) should I copy across? Failing this does anyone still sell licences?

5. Finally Why on earth are the icons on the os3.9 install only displaying in 2 colours, when the screen is set to 256 colours?? Everything else is OK why not them?

Sorry mammoth post but I hope someone can help me ressurect an old friend.

@cogvos1

Quote:Before AmigaOS 3.9, or IDEFix, is loaded from the HD it is accessed with the kickstart 3.0 or 3.1 ROM IDE scsi.device which is limited to 4 GB. Therefore you have to change the boot partition to < 4 GB and it has to be completely inside the first 4 GB of the drive. For the Workbench/boot partition a few 100 MB are enough.

Quote:Icons with 256 colours are only possible since AmigaOS 3.9 (or maybe 3.5, starting with AmigaOS4 32 bit true colour icons with alpha are supported), this new icon format, "GlowIcons", adds the new, up to 256 colour (or 32 bit in OS4), icons to the old, max. 4 colour, ones. If you access such icons, for example the ones on the OS3.9 install CD, while running AmigaOS 3.1 or older you only get the old, max. 4 colour, icon images. But if you boot from the OS 3.9 boot floppy for installing AmigaOS 3.9 you should see the 256 colour icon images.

@joerg

NewIconsV4 with Kickstart/Workbench 3.0 also allows 256-colour icons...

@cogvos1

Hi all,

Many thanks for the replies.

The Roms, are 3.1s as I upgraded when I purchased 3.5 so the 4 gb limit on boot makes sense, except...

I'm trying to format after the rom update has loaded. The Amiga boots and then boots again. So I should be able to format > 4gb? Or is there a limit to the size of the partition in 3.9. I know there used to be a 2gb dos limit, which TD64 could not overcome, but would guess that 3.9 does?

Am I still limited to 2gb partitions even though I can use a disk >4gb? HDtoolbox reports the disk as 37.9 GB.

Do I have to full format the partitions, or can I just quick format them? The disk will have been originally formated as PC (prob NTSC). It's the full format which is falling over, after taking ages to do so :/

On the Icon front I am truly baffled. The icons that are not being shown as 256 colour are the new icons! The ones that come off the 3.9 cd. They're all rendered as 2 colour, but the
screen mode is 256 colour pal. Weird....

Hope someone can help and once again many thanks for replying.

@cogvos1

Thomas has written a program to help with large hard disks, called Check4GB. Look at this thread on A.org, it might be helpful.

http://www.amiga.org/modules/newbb/vi ... hp?topic_id=44352&forum=8

Also, NTSC is a screenmode, I think you probably mean NTFS.

@meega

Many thanks, I'll look at the thread...
Right read it! I'll see what check4gb comes up with.

There are also mentions of SFS and TD64. The last I know of, though do not use since I am on 3.9 with IDEFIX 97 (but see ---below---). SFS sounds intriguing. A quick look around shows it's journalled (ala Ext2) has anyone had any experience of it? What compatibility issues are there re recovery software (see ---below---)

NTSC - NTFS yep got it wrong But can I quick format a NTFS drive and then use it on the amiga?


---below---

After much sweating I got to a stage where I could run disksalv (aminet version) on the old system disk and transfer as much as possible onto the borrowed HD (not the 40gb that I am still struggling with). This worked OK. I have the icons back in full colour and all looks OK. disksalv reported 8 errors. But I could not find out what they were.

The thing that has not worked however is IDEFIX which now has the correct serial number and company. But has lost the registration code! I guess this is somewhere on the old disk. Has anyone any ideas where?

J.

@cogvos1

every time you recover a backup, IdeFIX requires to retype the serial number and company again (it is stored in the filesystem/idefix.library and not on a separated file)

@Framiga

Oh rats! the idefix.library file was part of the backup. So I would have thought that this would have meant that I would not have to enter it again (?). I've just emailed Power Computing (who I bought it from some 9 years ago). In the vain hope I can either buy another copy or get the key from them. I also tried Elaboratebytes. Both are still going, but neither mention Amiga products. Power have Amiga as an option on their support email, so perhaps there is hope?

One thing I do not get is why the UAE install I have, which is basically a direct copy of my Amiga does not keep moaning that IDEFIX is an evaluation copy. Surely it should?

<edit>

Actually the serial number and company did come of the backup! But it still wants me to enter an activation key. So I guess that's what I need to find on the old disk, there must be a flag or something!


<edit>

Actually the plot thickens. The UAE version is 2003, the one on the Amiga is 2002... When I copy the UAE one to the Amiga and reboot, it goes back to 2002!

@cogvos1

because the idefix.library datestamp is related to the activation date.

Theres nothing you can do but to retype the activation key.

@cogvos1

Quote:

The format program does not support big hard drives (at least not the original one from the CD). Always use quick format on hard drives.

Full format produces nothing but hot air anyway.

Bye,
Thomas

@all

Dear erm, everyone?

Many many thanks for your replies. I found (after turning the place inside out) the activation code so IDEFIX no-longer whines.

I have also managed to get a 20 gb disk, which is now installed in my Amiga, and works... buts (you could feel that coming)

Disk access is much slower than the old 1 gb drive. I know that the FFS does slow down with bigger disks, but could anyone suggest ways of getting to be a bit quicker?


PS the 40 gb disk just refused to work - no idea why...

@cogvos1

I don't know if it will help, but have you tried using directory cache mode?

@cogvos1

Quote:

Use SFS instead of FFS.

To tune FFS

- create several small partitions instead of one big one
- use a bigger file system block size
- use a huge number of buffers

Bye,
Thomas

@thomas

Hi,

I had a look at SFS and was going to give it a go, but got seriously put off by all the dire warnings (if it breaks tough kind of thing) in the documentation. I use Linux (ext2) so have used journalled file systems but I was not at all sure how sfs would work next to ffs drives. I have mac, ffs and linux partitions on a second disk and was concerned that sfs would not like to sit in an amiga with such a combination.

I was also rather baffled about whether you could have sfs and ffs partitions on the same drive (not the mac/linux one) since you have to place it into the rdb. Would I run into the usual problem with having multiple filing systems=multiple icons for the same drive? (PC0/DF0 sort of thing)

Finally having just got the amiga to work again I am rather loathed to install a filing system which would mean having to reformat all(?)/some of the partitions again and re-install. How easy is it to to play with sfs on a single partition without having to reformat the whole lot?

J.

@cogvos1

Quote:

You misunderstood the mechanism. You can have only one icon per drive. From DOS' point of view, PC0 and DF0 are different drives. That they share the same hardware is very unusual.

Storing a file system in the RDB does mean nothing but storing the program in the reserved area of the HDD. It just sits there doing no harm until somebody uses it.

When you create partitions, you select a file system for each partition. You can select one of the available file systems. Each partition has one (and only one) file system. But every partition can have a different one, they don't interact with each other.

For DOS, each partition is a different drive.

So yes, you can have multiple file systems on different partitions on the same HDD without any problems. Whether you use many or few does not make a difference.

Bye,
Thomas

@thomas

Hi Thomas,

Many thanks for putting me right on this. I had assumed that it would be the same as the first blocks (can't remember what they are called, mdb?) on a PC where the boot loader is stored (Grub/Lifo in the case of linux). If you overwrite that you can end up with a dud system that won't boot.

So I can have multiple file systems stored, which is good. I presume it's just a case of sticking sfs there using hdtoolbox and then partioning using that filesystem. Do I have to install the disk? or can I just copy the filesystem over? I think installing zaps the whole disk? Sorry if these sound stupid questions, it's been a while since I had to do any kind of HD work. Just shows how reliable my A1200 is!

J

@cogvos1

AFAIK there are installation instructions in the SFS archive.

In short:

run HDToolbox, go to partition drive, then to add/update. Click on Add, choose the SmartFileSystem file, change the DosType (identifier) to 0x53465300 (which stands for SFS\0) and click on save. That's the first step. This does not change anything, it just makes SFS available.

Now you choose one partition and click on "change...". Change the file system to SFS\0 and click on Save.

Now that partition has been changed to SFS and must be reformatted to be used (so backup the data before you change it).

Other partitions are not affected.

Bye,
Thomas

@cogvos1

Sorry me again.

Having got my A1200 back from the dead I decided to clear out the startup-sequence and user-startup-sequence of junk

In the process I noticed that the lines relating to ide-fix were commented out in startup-sequence. But I have a 4 way buffered interface! That can't be right. So I uncomment them, re-boot and get read errors on all my partitions Eek! I reboot using no-startup and comment the ide-fix lines out again and it all works. How is this possible?

I've got a 4 way buffered ide interface (can't remember the make) with the following drives

Unit 0 Hard drive 20gb
Unit 1 Hard drive 30gb
Unit 2 LS120 drive, so I can read PC format HD disks. And I have OS3.9
Unit 3 CD rom

All of these work, if rather slowly as I am using FFS at present. Has anyone got any ideas? Is there any way that ide-fix can get loaded, without the C:idefix command in the startup-sequence?

J

@cogvos1

Unit 0 and 1 work without software and unit 2 and 3 probably use atapi.device which is part of the IDEfix package but does not need the IDEfix program running.

If IDEfix interferes with OS 3.9, then you probably got a rather old version of the IDEfix software. If you still have your registration key, you should upgrade to IDEfix97 from Aminet.

Bye,
Thomas

@thomas

Hi Thomas,

Very odd, I'm sure its the 97 version. That's what it says on the floppy and the draw that's created on install anyway. I read on the net that os3.9 patched scsi.device, but thought that was just to make it able to use disks bigger than 4gb. Guess getting the aminet version of Idefix won't hurt. I just checked, the mounts for the cd and ls120 do use atapi.device

J.