Why are my partitions not showing up?

[-Acid-]

I posted this on Amibay but no replies so thought I would try here.

I just bought a new 160gb hd, i'm using an IDE-Fix 97 buffered interface. I've got The 160gb hd on the first channel as master and a DVD drive as slave. Then on the other channel I have my old 20gb hard drive as master and a CF-IDE adapter as the slave. Partitioned: 160GB: 1.6gb & 2x half of what was left; 20GB: 2gb & 17gb; CF: 200mb & 3.5gb. All using SFS and i'm using Classic WB Adv with IDE Fix installed.

Okay so I set it all up and last night got booted up and all partitions and DVD drive were present, I began to edit the menu's in scalos and while doing do the os suddenly crashed due to a software failure. On the reboot only the first partition of each hd appears on WB now, the CF card still shows both partitions and the DVD drive is working too.

When I boot from cold all the partitions on the 160gb drive show up in the early boot window (EBW), after WB loads and idefix kicks in if I go back into the EBW then it sees all hard disks and partitions on all devices.

So I let WB load but again only the first partition on each hard drive shows up. I load up HDToolBox for a look and it sees all the partitions, all are set to automount, all have SFS as the file system and 50 buffers each. The identifier, mask and transfer rate are all correct for SFS (0x53465300 / 0x7ffffffe / 0x1fe00) and nothing has been changed since the earlier crash.

What is wrong here? I don't understand how everything was fine then after a simple software crash I can't get my big partitions back. I've been going round in circles for hours here getting nowhere, hopefully it's something simple someone can point out to me.

If I open up a shell and try to cd to a missing partition it gives the error "DH1: not enough memory available" and the same happens for DH2 and HD1. My startup sequence has the commands loadide reset quiet and idefix as some of the first entries next to setpatch (just after the script to check for lmb or rmb on boot).

Someone please solve this mystery for me as i'm getting nowhere with it

[thomas]

How much memory do you have? If it says there is not enough memory available, perhaps it is just that?

[Bamiga2002]

Using SetPatch skip scsi.device. Maybe that interferes with Idefix's own.

SetPatch SKIPROMUPDATES scsi.device

[-Acid-]

Originally Posted by thomas

How much memory do you have? If it says there is not enough memory available, perhaps it is just that?

I have an 060 with 64mb on board.

[-Acid-]

Originally Posted by Bamiga2002

Using SetPatch skip scsi.device. Maybe that interferes with Idefix's own.

SetPatch SKIPROMUPDATES scsi.device

I'll give that a try in a minute, however I was looking in devs and there is no scsi.device file, could this be part of the problem?

Edit: tried this and no effect

[Bamiga2002]

The scsi.device is in

DEVS:AmigaOS ROM Update

file and SetPatch only activates it from there.

[jPV]

Originally Posted by -Acid-

I have an 060 with 64mb on board.

But how much free memory? Both chip and fast... if either one is still full for reason or other?

Each partition consumes some memory and if there isn't enough available it can't mount them. Blocksize and buffers affect to it... those alone shouldn't take whole 64M (unless you have massive amounts of buffer set), but if there is something else.

[-Acid-]

Originally Posted by jPV

But how much free memory? Both chip and fast... if either one is still full for reason or other?

Each partition consumes some memory and if there isn't enough available it can't mount them. Blocksize and buffers affect to it... those alone shouldn't take whole 64M (unless you have massive amounts of buffer set), but if there is something else.

Once booted I have 1933 kb chip and 64327kb fast available. I have buffers set to 50 on every partition, too much? Blocksize is default, whatever that was as i've never changed that value.

[jPV]

Originally Posted by -Acid-

Once booted I have 1933 kb chip and 64327kb fast available. I have buffers set to 50 on every partition, too much? Blocksize is default, whatever that was as i've never changed that value.

No problem there. 50 definitely isn't too much.

How about trying to run Check4GB from aminet, if the big hd support is in place for sure?

[-Acid-]

Originally Posted by jPV

No problem there. 50 definitely isn't too much.

How about trying to run Check4GB from aminet, if the big hd support is in place for sure?

When I run Check4GB, I get a * for every partition above 4gb, but I don't understand why when I have SFS installed and they used to be fine and nothing has changed in the system. Two days ago I had full access to my 20Gb drive, all my data is on the big partition on it which is really annoying me.

[thomas]

Please enter the early startup menu immediately after power-on and start without startup-sequence. Then run check4gb from the DOS prompt and save the log.

Now edit s:startup-sequence and remove both loadide and idefix.

Reset and let it boot. Run check4gb again and save the log as a different name.

Then open a Shell window and enter

loadide reset

Let it boot and run Check4GB a third time and save the log again.

Attach all three logs here and describe which partitions were visible when.

[-Acid-]

Is this what you need? all help appreciated

[thomas]

It seems like your version of IDEfix/LoadIDE is too old and does not support large harddrives.

You should update using this: http://aminet.net/disk/misc/IDEfix97.lha
(You need a valid license key if you don't have OEM hardware.)

It creates scsi.device version 119 as opposed to your version 105.

[-Acid-]

Thankyou for your help it's fixed the 160gb drive problem, I can now access all partitions on that drive, the problem was I came into possession of a legit idefix disk, I didn't realise it wasn't the 97 version until you told me (duh), the DVD drive is working fine too, however...

Now I have lost the other channel, so my 2nd hard drive isn't showing up and nor is the IDE-CF adapter which was before I installed IdeFix97. Have I forgot to do something here? At no stage is either device seen by the Amiga in HDToolBox even after IdeFix loads.

[thomas]

Check IDEfixPrefs. Change settings from "auto" to what you actually have.

Also check startup-sequence. Make sure that only one IDEfix program is called, either LoadIDE RESET or IDEfix. And only once. (If you want >4G support you need LoadIDE).

To work with CF cards you might also need this: http://www.doobreynet.co.uk/files/am...ix_patches.lha

[-Acid-]

Originally Posted by thomas

Check IDEfixPrefs. Change settings from "auto" to what you actually have.

Also check startup-sequence. Make sure that only one IDEfix program is called, either LoadIDE RESET or IDEfix. And only once. (If you want >4G support you need LoadIDE).

To work with CF cards you might also need this: http://www.doobreynet.co.uk/files/am...ix_patches.lha

Removing idefix doesn't seem to make a difference and ideprefs looks okay there isn't much to change. As for the CF card, it's not exactly a CF card as it's in a CF to IDE adapter so it's seen as a regular IDE hard drive. It was working fine without additional drivers along with the other hard drive about 5 days ago.

It's possible I could have damaged the ide cable when changing hard drives I guess, I will try another one tomorrow to see if that is the problem.

[-Acid-]

New IDE cable has fixed the second channel problems so I guess I damaged the other cable when changing things around. Everything is working great again as it should.

Thanks a lot for your help Thomas, much appreciated.

[thomas]

I find it a bit strange that the old version of IDEfix worked with the bad cable.

Nevertheless it's great that it works now.

[-Acid-]

Originally Posted by thomas

I find it a bit strange that the old version of IDEfix worked with the bad cable.

Nevertheless it's great that it works now.

It didn't though, I couldn't access beyond the first 4Gb of the other drive until you pointed out I was on an old IdeFix. It was probably just a coincidence that the cable gave it up at roughly the same time I mistakenly installed the old IdeFix.

[thomas]

It didn't though, I couldn't access beyond the first 4Gb

This is a software limit, it has nothing to do with hardware. The old version worked correctly inside its own limits. It won't access beyond 4GB with the new cable, either.