Hard Disk Hell

I have recieved my A1200 and got a 520MB 2.5 IDE hard disk for it. Ordered the standard 44pin connector lead through power computing which arrived today, and eagerly connected the harddrive as following an old Amiga Shopper Guide......

But just cannot get workbench to recognise it at all!!!

I have connected the IDE cable with the red strip (pin 0) facing towards the bottom of the motherboard and to the hard drive with the red strip on the right of the connector if viewed from above the blank shielding and not the circuitboard underside.

I have WB3.1 and used the install disk and HDToolBox but it waits a few seconds then shows up with nothing at all

I have tried many times, also soft reset the amiga.

When the amiga first boots the hard drive hums then spins and I can hear it accessing for a second, then it just stays quiet as Install disk loads and hums the whole time, and it doesn't make a sound even when HDtoolbox tries to detect it.

Do you think it could be a bad drive? I bought it from my local pc shop and he's well respected and used to sell much Amiga hardware back in 92 etc.

Also I know the drive is MSDos formatted, could this be the problem?

I assume the lead is the right way up etc, but I really have tried and tried but to no avail.

I'll leave this post and go try it with my 600 just to see if it works with that.

Also the A1200 although new, has been tested all yesterday and is fine, my wb disks are also fine so it's really got me as to what this is. I have been reading that the standard file system can use up to 4gig and seeing as this is only 520meg it can't be anything like that. If my 600 doesn't detect it and I can't find out much then I'll take the drive back I suppose but they had nothing else small and 520 was perfect for me

[RetroMan]

Be sure to try HDInstTools from Aminet (which is another HDToolBox Version but got support for many more HD´s) ...

[jmmijo]

Well the common parts here are:

The hard drive
The data cable
The interface

Since the 600 uses the same 44-pin interface then by swapping out the same hard drive and data cable you can verify if indeed the problem is the same on the 600 as it is the 1200.

The other problem is that you didn't mention the make and model of the hard drive. Seems most manufacturers do have an archive of older drives that you can refer to for tech specs, including the connector pin-outs!

Sorry yes the make and model - IBM DHAA-2540 540MB

I am just about to try it on my 600, I've been trying to get HDInstTools onto my amiga, the file I found at aminet wasn't an adf (obviously) but for some reason my CrossDos doesn't seem to read the disk when I save the file on a pc disk and use it on my amiga, long story, but does anyone have an adf version of HDInstTools? In the readme it talks about using the disk supplied.

I'll try the 600 anyway.

[adolescent]

Have you verified the master/slave/cs jumper setting? AFAIK, it should be set to master.

Here is a link to IBMs support site for your drive.

http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/dhaa/dhaajum.htm