CF to IDE adapter - Max size card?

[crispywotsits]

Hi guys,

Just wanted to throw this one out here, I'm wondering is there a max size for the compact flash card that you can use with a CF-IDE adapter in an A1200?

I see loads of people have opted for 4 GB cards and use them without problems. I am thinking of going for an 8 GB card off ebay - can get one for around £15 - £20 and I think 8GB would be enough for all of KillerGorilla's excellent WHD Game packs.

What do you think?

Anyone had any success with any particular 8 GB cards or ones to avoid?

Thanks
Chris

[TheCorfiot]

Chris

I think most people are going for 4GB cards as it fit's in nicely with KS3.1 / WB3.1 HD size limits.

I'm sure an 8GB card will work but you will have to use the SFS filesystem to use the full capacity or OS3.9 with BB1 &BB2 with the ROM update, scsi.device & FFS updates.

TC

[crispywotsits]

Ok, 3.9 is out of the question given that the board has only got 3.0 Roms, but thats ok.

Is there much then to putting on SFS? Is this reliable?

Cheers
Chris

[TheCorfiot]

@Chris

Not a user myself (OS3.9), but from what I have read it is very stable & probably performs a bit faster than FFS.

Downside is it can be a bitch to install & understand how it all works together if you are a noob. Quite a bit of prep work to undertake.

My good friend Killergorilla has written a great wiki guide to installing SFS, Have a read & judge for yourself.

But yes the 4GB route does seem easier.

BTW there's nothing stopping you using an 8GB card & just using the first 3.99GB with FFS initially. This does leave you with future options.

TC

[alexh]

I think a CF->IDE adapter is limited to 128Gbytes (28-bit LBA) due to the limitation in the KS-ROM scsi.device for Gayle IDE.

Toni Wilen patched it recently to 48-bit LBA... search this forum and you should find it.

That said... I doubt there are 128Gbyte cards (yet).

[crispywotsits]

Perfect guys, thats great help - it'll be a while before the CF adapter makes it here from china anyways and no more funds till the end of the month so we'll see how it goes next month.

I'll post my findings here.

Cheers
Chris

[thomas]

SFS does *not* allow to use more than 4GB !!

Only a very old version of SFS which can be found here does this.

To use more than 4GB without a scsi.device patch you have these options:

- SFS 1.84 as mentioned above
- FFSTD64
- PFS3ds

This allows you to use 8.4 GB (7.8 GiB). Not more. Talking about LBA48 in this context is ridiculous.

Toni's patch is for OS 3.9 only.

[crispywotsits]

If I were to create multiple partitions up to the 8 GB, would that be ok?

Is it disks greater than 4 GB or partitions greater than 4 GB that cause problems?

Cheers
Chris

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by crispywotsits

If I were to create multiple partitions up to the 8 GB, would that be ok?

Is it disks greater than 4 GB or partitions greater than 4 GB that cause problems?

All partition(s) must be inside first 4G of disk. (if you don't want sudden data loss..)

[crispywotsits]

So realistically then, without going to 3.9, a 4 GB CF card is really the max that I can put in reliably... thats fair enough - it would be pointless to buy an 8 GB one, fill it and then find out my data is gone!

On another note, I assume then that OS 3.9 doesn't have this problem? Does OS 4 and MorphOS have this fix also?

Cheers for your help
Chris

[thomas]

Originally Posted by crispywotsits

So realistically then, without going to 3.9, a 4 GB CF card is really the max that I can put in reliably... thats fair enough - it would be pointless to buy an 8 GB one, fill it and then find out my data is gone!

Seems like you only read the first sentence of my post and ignored the rest.

You can perfectly use the 8GB card, even wird only one big partition, if you first (!) install one of the mentioned file systems. These file systems install into the disk's partition table with the Add/Update page of HDToolbox. Nothing else is needed.

[crispywotsits]

Sorry Thomas,

I did read your post, it just didn't sink in 100%, I was just trying to figure out the most reliable solution here - it does seem that I could use another filesystem, but when I first went to the Smart File System page, I could see that there were disclaimers all over the place about losing data.

Sorry, the 8 GB card is not pointless as I made out - pointless was a bad choice of words - it just add extra complexity to the mix. Having said that, I'm not one for going the easy route anyways and probably will go for an 8 GB card with one of the filesystems - as this is going to be a WHD Load machine mainly, there really shouldn't be anything on it that can't be easily replaced.

Thanks for all your help guys - sorry about misreading that.

Cheers
Chris