Whats the Max side HDD an A600 can take?

I was goi ng to get a nice cheap few hundred meg Amiga 2.5'' HDD but i was let down. Now im looking for another, classiconline.org.uk/hd.html had an Amiga 2.5" 810mb HDD for £65 and i think thats a liitle steep.

I can get a 10gig IDE 2.5 for £70 from dabs.com what id like to know is can the amiga take 2.5 PC IDE drives and will an old (non modifed) A600 be able to handle a 10 gig drive?

Or does any one know were i can get a 200mb+ AMiga 2.5" HDD for less than £50?

[derSammler]

You need at least kickstart 2.05 / 37.350 to use harddrives larger than 40 MB. That's the only limitation I know. Maybe you need a better filesystem like PFS too, because FFS can only handle 4 GB.

Could you explain these filesystems to me please?

[Korodny]

@sgt_chimp:


> Could you explain these filesystems to me please?

Simplified explanation:

The AmigaOS itself doesn't have the slightest idea how to talk to HDs. It needs a small progam
(a socalled "device") that is specialised for that task. There are different devices for
different HD controllers. In your case, this program is called "scsi.device" (the name is
misleading), it is responsible for the onboard HD controller of your A600. The scsi.device is
a part of your Kickstart ROM.

Using scsi.device, AmigaOS is able to recognise your HD, it can move the read/write head of
your Harddisk around etc. But it still has no clue how to organise data on the HD. So it needs
another small program, the "filesystem". The filesystem is responsible for organizing the stuff
on your disks (it knows how files are stored, it knows how to create a directory etc.).
In your case, the filesystem is called FFS ("FastFileSystem", this is the standard Amiga
filesystem), and it is a part of your Kickstart ROM.

Using the original filesystem and OS 2.x/3.x scsi.device, you shouldn't use any harddisks bigger
than 4GB (you *can* actually use bigger HDs, but *never* *ever* create partitions that are bigger
than 4GB). OS 2.x is ten years old, and the guys developing it probably couldn't imagine that
there ever would be disks bigger than 4GB, so they simply didn't care about it.

You don't have to use FFS, there are replacement filesystems from third party developers. These
have various advantages (they are faster, more reliable, can use bigger HDs etc.). The two most
important third party filesystems are "SFS" (Smart FileSystem) and "PFS" (Professional
FileSystem, commercial). Both are very good.

Using SFS or PFS, you could use partitions bigger than 4GB, but installing a replacement
filesystem is a bit tricky for a novice user. And I doubt that you'll manage to fill up a 4GB
harddisk that is connected to a plain A600: You would have to transfer about 5000 disks to it

[kriz]

Install Os3.9 (or Os3.5) and you can use as large hd you want (but you have to get kickstart 3.1)..

Another option is to get PFS from http://on.to/greed/, this is not hard and it is very fast ... (much faster delte, copy, move)..

"PFS=PROFESSIONAL FILESYSTEM.

supports harddisk sizes upto 2000 Gigabyte

supports partitions upto 104 Gigabyte

works on all Amiga's/harddisks without the need for extra hard or software!"

I can recomend it...

[Amiga1992]

Originally posted by Korodny
[BUsing SFS or PFS, you could use partitions bigger than 4GB [/B]

Are these file systems 100% compatible with Amiga OFS/FFS filesystems?

[Korodny]

@kriz:

He can't install OS 3.5+ as these OS versions require an 68020. Personnaly, I'd say a 68030/50
is the recommended minimum - The new icon system (icons with up to 256 colors) is way too slow
otherwise).

@Akira:

Yes, 100% compatible for normal applications. But you better throw away your existing disk
recovery tools and stuff like that

But it's really worth the effort: Both are actually *journaling* filesystems (turn of the machine
during a *write* access and it won't care - since I'm using SFS I didn't have one validation
process). And they're pretty fast.

[RetroMan]

I prefer SFS to PFS 1.) cause it´s freeware 2.) I have had NO Data losses in the last 2 years ..... they both are MUCH faster than the original FFS ..... I also once bought a copy of PFS at EBay but I was disappointed, cause it allways gave me an error at first bootup, after reboot it worked fine ..... think everyone must discover the best filesystem for himself ..... but for me I allways prefer freeware !! But one thing is correct : PFS is VERY easy to install and SFS is a bit tricky but there comes a good doc with it, so it´s possible to install for everyone