Large HD Support Without Reboot?
 

Hi guys,
Does anyone know of a reliable way of using large hard drives and partitions without requiring a reboot to install ROM updates? I'm thinking of a 3.1 setup, 60GB HD with a 100MB boot partition and the rest in a single partition, on the internal IDE of an A1200. I use SFS on all partitions, and have installed IDEFix and it appears to work, though I don't know whether to trust it or not - the correct number of blocks are reported free, though the space is calculated incorrectly in the info command output.

I have a similar 3.9 setup which works fine, but of course performs a reboot, and I'm trying to get the absolute minimum boot time for a particular project. I probably won't even load Workbench, just need to be able to access the large partition safely.

Thanks!

1) Updated your Kickstart ROM to KS3.9 using RomSplit/Remus & EPROM programmer.
2) Use a Kickflash, eFlash or a Deneb to patch KS on fly

Updating the scsi.device with LoadV43Module doesn't need a reboot IIRC.

Yes it does.
Only the 2 methods mentioned by Alexh don't require a reboot.

But is very quick compared to OS3.9 boot/reboot.

On my CWB P96/Adv SP setups it is hardly noticeable, quick flash of the HDD LED the power LED and its booting right away :)

Yeah, I know it's pretty quick - it comes down to trying to reduce a 7-second boot time to a 5-second boot time - I know it's already pretty short, but was hoping to save those couple of seconds. I might see about getting custom ROMs alright, we'll see! Thanks guys, I'll put the reboot in for the time being anyway.

Just for my curiosity though, How does 3.9 fix the issue when I have IDE-Fix installed? It skips the scsi.device update on the setpatch line, and so uses the IDE-Fix patched scsi.device instead... What's different about 3.1 then? Does IDE-Fix just need a reboot to fully activate?

Do you need to use IDE-Fix's scsi.device with a KS3.9? I don't think so.

No, you don't, but if you look at the 3.9 Startup-sequence, it allows for its use by running IDEFix and skipping the scsi.device update if it detects IDE-Fix installed. I used it for years like that on my towered A1200 with a 4-way adaptor and large hard drives...

Anyway, what I'm really asking is - if that does work (and it does), what's different with the 3.1 scsi.device and the unpatched 3.9 one when using IDE-Fix?

There is no "unpatched 3.9 one". If you don't run OS 3.9 patches, then the 3.1 version from the Kickstart is used.



What did you do/change to make this work? Which version of IDEfix and which version of SFS do you use? If I try this here, the partitions outside the first 4GB don't even show up.

With PFS3 however, it does indeed work. Partitions outside 4GB show as NDOS and after patching scsi.device with IDEfix, DiskChange can be used to make these partitions visible.

I think he means if you burn your own KS3.9 EPROM with scsi.device 43.6b or 44.2?

Id also be intrested - I dont like the Reboot and also after the updated SCSI update reboot seems to takes longer.
I thouight IDEFix worked much the same? and allowed large HDs or are there restrictions?

@thomas,
Yeah, I know that it's the ROM based one, it's what I meant in a roundabout way :) Okay, I'll tell you the exact setup. I used 3.9 and its emergency boot disk to install and partition the drive. I have

DH0: 100MB Workbench 3.1
DH1: 100MB Workbench 3.9
DH2: ~5GB Stuff
DH3: ~50GB Music

So I installed SFS 1.279 on the RDB, set all the partitions to use it, and (quick) formatted all the partitions under the 3.9 emergency disk. Then I installed 3.9 on DH1, all working fine. Next, I installed 3.1 from my OS3.5 CD on DH0: That worked as well, but couldn't see the larger partitions. I installed IDE-Fix that I've had for years (just checked, and IDEFix.library version 101.1, 13-Feb-99), and installed Setpatch 43.6 and NSDPatch 43.2 from os.amigaworld.de, and that's it. Appears to work fine. I'm filling the 5GB partition to see if anything bad happens before I actually use it for anything, will see about filling the 50GB partition too - though that'll take an age!

Kickstart 3.1 contains version 40, OS 3.9 is version 44, IDEfix contains version 119. Should be obvious which one is used.


Sorry, this was my fault. I made a mistake editing startup-sequence so that IDEfix was not active. With IDEfix active, SFS works the same way as PFS3: you just need to access the big partitions to make them active. So if you have any assign which points to the big partition, you won't even notice that it is not active from the start.


Just what is discussed in this thread from the beginning: run IDEfix in startup-sequence, then access the partitions which won't show up, for example with DiskChange dh1: or with Asssign something: work:somepath

To answer your initial question: yes, if SFS allows you to access the partition, then it is safe to use it.

Sweet, thanks :) Yeah, IDEFix gives version 119.something, but only in the "select device" screen in HDToolbox. Typing "version scsi.device" in the shell still gives version 40. Sorry for not being clear enough - I did mean the v40 scsi.device when I said the "unpatched 3.9" one.

Thanks again for the swift help and reassurance :)

?? You thinking along the lines bigger is better? IDEFix version number of 119 not comparable as it is not the same codebase.

OS 3.9 is 43.41 not 44

BB2 patched it to 43.43.

That in turn was patched to 43.45 by Toni Wilen & Chris Hodges

43.45 has since been patched by Cosmos to 43.46b4

Sometime in the past 43.43 was patched by Doobrey to 44.2 but the number is deceptive as it predates 43.45.

I think he meant which version *was* used, rather than which version *should* be used. But I could be wrong...

Ah yes, my mistake.