hdd trouble...

[jrom]

Oke... I'm at the point of throwing my hdd against the wall...

No matter what MaxTransfer setting I choose, my 20GB IDE hdd refuses to format correctly on my new Amiga 4000. Is there a way of telling which settings go with a harddrive? It is a Maxtor Drive 7200rpm... maybe that is the problem? ...going slightly mad

edit: ps. i'm trying to format a 1024mb partition and using SFS1.214 on a 060 system...

[Jope]

Originally Posted by jrom

No matter what MaxTransfer setting I choose, my 20GB IDE hdd refuses to format correctly on my new Amiga 4000. Is there a way of telling which settings go with a harddrive? It is a Maxtor Drive 7200rpm... maybe that is the problem? ...going slightly mad

edit: ps. i'm trying to format a 1024mb partition and using SFS1.214 on a 060 system...

So.. What OS? Any patches to the scsi.device?

How does it fail?

Did you use a quick format? Always quick format HDD partitions.

[jrom]

After a lot of trying I've got it up and running with MASK: 0x7FFFFFFC setting. This seems to be stable for my HD (I hope)...

[ant512]

Originally Posted by Jope

Did you use a quick format? Always quick format HDD partitions.

You don't strictly need to quick format HDD partitions - if a drive has read/write errors, for example, you must perform a full format in order to correct it.

[manicx]

Just for your info. The latest releases of SFS are not compatible with HDs larger than 4Gbs. The last release that was able to 'see' larger HDs and work probably was v 1.84 or 1.184 if we consider that the latest release is 1.214. Most people who used latest SFS with large HDs have problems. I am not sure why they changed this, but I am sure that people should email the author and ask back for the functionality...

[thomas]

Originally Posted by manicx

The latest releases of SFS are not compatible with HDs larger than 4Gbs.

This simply is not true. SFS was and is compatible with HDs larger than 4GB.

The only thing which was changed from 1.84 to 1.187 (or so) was to remove SCSI-Direct support. This means you cannot use *only* SFS to get >4GB support, you also need a patch for scsi.device which adds TD64 or NSD support. With controllers which already support TD64 or NSD (for example Elbox FastATA) SFS works happily without any patch.

[jrom]

Oke... I'm currently running OS3.9 on my Amiga 4000... I thought it was stable but as soon as I transfered the BoingBags to the HD I still got trouble.

MaxTransfer: 0x0000FFFE
Mask: 0x7FFFFFFC

One file can go oke... the other doesn't... *sigh*

Is this thing ever going to run stable on software or do I need an extra controller for it?

[Enverex]

You shouldn't have changed the max-transfer in the first place... they are normally perfectly fine as what there are by default.

Manicx: Stop saying it doesn't support more than 4GB when firstly everyone is still using it on drives over 4GB, and secondly the Readme states

Support for partitions larger than 4 GB or located (partially) beyond the 4 GB barrier on your drive. There is support for the New Style Devices (NSD) and the 64-bit trackdisk commands (TD64) which support 64 bit access.

[jrom]

No... the reason I changed the settings is because it wasn't working fine in the first place. That is mostly the reason for changing settings...

[thomas]

Originally Posted by jrom

No... the reason I changed the settings is because it wasn't working fine in the first place. That is mostly the reason for changing settings...

Please get the Check4GB archive from Aminet and run the program CheckHD. It will tell you if your setup is ready for a HDD >4GB.

http://www.aminet.net/aminet.cgi?string=check4gb

Please also post the output here, even if it shows everything ok. The list might be a good help for analysis.

[jrom]

Name Volume Device Unit Size >4GB DosType Version
CD AmigaOS3.9 cybscsi.device 3 593 MB no CD01 42.19 ok
DH0 System scsi.device 0 1.00 GB no DOS\03 45.9 ok
DF0 trackdisk.device 0 880 kB no DOS\00 45.9 ok
DF2 trackdisk.device 2 880 kB no DOS\00 45.9 ok
DF3 trackdisk.device 3 880 kB no DOS\00 45.9 ok
DH1 scsi.device 0 18.01 GB yes CFS\00 1.214 ok

I deleted the previous setup... CFS == SFS (CFS equals Custom File System)

[Enverex]

Are you sure you put the descriptor in properly as I think it should still show as SFS even on the latest HDToolbox.

[jrom]

That is not the problem here... this was just a quick reinstall (without success :P) previous setup did have proper "SFS\00" description.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by ant512

You don't strictly need to quick format HDD partitions - if a drive has read/write errors, for example, you must perform a full format in order to correct it.

Heh actually, if you have R/W errors on your HDD, make a backup, take a sledge hammer to it and buy a new one..

Are you 100% certain about the AmigaOS format command marking errors? I haven't had the same experience myself.

Edit: And yes, I still stand by my recommendation: Always quick format HDs. They don't need the full format, as the lowlevel format is always there..

The reason why I recommend quick is, that many format commands don't support large partitions! They'll just wrap around and perhaps thrash some other data. If you make a habit of always quick formatting hard disks, you'll never run into the problem and it doesn't make any difference anyway. :-)

[ant512]

Originally Posted by Jope

Heh actually, if you have R/W errors on your HDD, make a backup, take a sledge hammer to it and buy a new one..

Are you 100% certain about the AmigaOS format command marking errors? I haven't had the same experience myself.

*Checksum* errors, yes - you need to chuck the drive out. Read/write errors, no - this can be caused by something as simple as the computer crashing whilst writing a file. The hard drive isn't physically damaged, just the data on the disk. Performing a quick format won't always fix this problem.

Edit: And yes, I still stand by my recommendation: Always quick format HDs. They don't need the full format, as the lowlevel format is always there..

If you have checksum errors on your drive, you can low-level format it if you like, just for shits and giggles. It's no good to start off with, and won't be any better when it's formatted (though it may, depending on the age of the drive, be much, much worse). Otherwise, don't low-level format an IDE drive.

[jrom]

Oke... Now I really broke my wooden shoe! :eek I copied both BoingBags into RAM: and installed them from there... renamed the update and nsd file... rebooted... and... IT WORKS NOW! I hope... I can (fully) format every partition size without hangups and don't get any CRC errors when unpacking lha's etc...

[Jope]

Originally Posted by ant512

*Checksum* errors, yes - you need to chuck the drive out. Read/write errors, no - this can be caused by something as simple as the computer crashing whilst writing a file. The hard drive isn't physically damaged, just the data on the disk. Performing a quick format won't always fix this problem.

Uh are you sure?

Checksum errors are soft errors, read/write errors are usually hard errors.

Checksum errors can usually be fixed in software.

If you have checksum errors on your drive, you can low-level format it if you like, just for shits and giggles. It's no good to start off with, and won't be any better when it's formatted (though it may, depending on the age of the drive, be much, much worse). Otherwise, don't low-level format an IDE drive.

Ok, you saw me talking about lowlevel formats and thought I was suggesting to do one? This was not what I meant.

Like you know, there are two kinds of format: (this is only for the sake of those who don't know)
- Lowlevel:
The empty tracks, positioning info etc on the media
- High level:
The filesystem (+ partitions if it's not a floppy)

When you format a floppy, the format command creates the lowlevel and highlevel formats at the same time.. When you format a HDD, the lowlevel format is already there, unless something bad happened (failed lowlevel format command, for example), so the format command doesn't touch it and only creates the logical stuff on top.

Thus, we go back to my point, you can always quickformat a HDD, but you can't always quickformat a floppy.. The floppy doesn't necessarily have the correct kind of tracks written on it, especially if it's an Amiga floppy, as you can easily create very nonstandard spt values etc.. But like I said above, the HDD will 99% of the time have the empty tracks where you can write the filesystem -> quickformatting HDD partitions is a-ok.

To my knowledge, Amiga filesystems don't have any way of marking out bad blocks.. The only place where you can do it is in the HD's bad block list or by doing a lowlevel format, if the HDD supports it. Not many do, so like you said, it's best to never touch the LLF button in HDTB. :-)

And to my sledgehammer remark, when you actually see a bad block on a modern hard drive, it means that the disk has run out of spare sectors and you should immediately backup and get rid of it. It'll only get worse over time and there's no remapping that it can do, so you'll start losing more data.

Don't worry, we're both on the same side here, just talking about the same things in slightly different words. You: checksum error, me: read/write error. :-)

However, I'm pretty sure that I'm correct in my wording. Please don't take this as a jab at you, just talking from a long personal experience with AmigaOS. (I'm sure you've been around too :-)

[jrom]

Oke... it works a bit better bit stilll some errors from time to time... *sigh*

[ant512]

Originally Posted by Jope

Don't worry, we're both on the same side here, just talking about the same things in slightly different words. You: checksum error, me: read/write error. :-)

However, I'm pretty sure that I'm correct in my wording. Please don't take this as a jab at you, just talking from a long personal experience with AmigaOS. (I'm sure you've been around too :-)

I'm sure I've got it the right way around, but it has been a long time since I've read up on any of this - maybe you're right. I would check, but I've just sold all of my Amiga magazines. Knew I'd need them for something as soon as I sold them.

Anyway, we are both arguing for the same side!

EDIT:

From the Workbench 3.0 manual, page 3-23:

"Quick Format is for formatting a disk that was previously formatted...Choosing the Quick Format option is faster than formatting the entire disk; however, it does not detect any read/write errors on the disk that could be eliminated by a full format."

[Jope]

Originally Posted by ant512

"Quick Format is for formatting a disk that was previously formatted...Choosing the Quick Format option is faster than formatting the entire disk; however, it does not detect any read/write errors on the disk that could be eliminated by a full format."

Heh, eliminated as in "noticed and then the user throws the floppy in the bin, as the formatting couldn't be finished" .. :-D

FFS doesn't have a bad block list like PC and Unix filesystems..