A1200 Biggest hard drive

[adgloride]

What is the biggest 2.5" hard drive you can fit in a A1200? I've heard that the amiga has a 4gb limit. Is there anyway to go over the limit? A software patch maybe. I have a 80mb hard disk in my Amiga 1200 at the moment. I'm after getting for example an 4.8gb laptop hard drive and putting it in the amiga. I'm thinking this should be straight forward just changing over the hard drive then partitioning it. Will a 4.8gb hard drive work? And also whats the largest 2.5" hard drive you can fit inside the amiga that will work. Thanks in advance.

I had a similar question when I was a tiny grasshopper like yourself.
My main amiga was a terrible PPC machine that gave me headaches so don't worry, your situation should be easier.

a short explanation: Yes, you can go over the limit by installing a better system than the default FFS one or by installing os 3.5/3.9

[Interceptor]

can you boot from these new filesystems? i mean, i'd just want to have say, a 10-20gb drive in my amiga, and have it boot, no partitions etc.

it sounds to me like you;d need to boot from a <4gb drive, and mount the larger one.

can you please clarify that for me, thanks!

[D-Dan]

IIRC, even with the standard A1200 MB IDE connector you can connect drives larger than 4 Gig - BUT - you'll have to prep it with partitions of 2Gig or less. 3rd party IDE controllers generally support bigger partitions, as does SFS/PFS etc.

[thomas]

Originally Posted by D-Dan

IIRC, even with the standard A1200 MB IDE connector you can connect drives larger than 4 Gig - BUT - you'll have to prep it with partitions of 2Gig or less. 3rd party IDE controllers generally support bigger partitions, as does SFS/PFS etc.

This is a fairy-tale !! Please do not spread such dangerous mud !!!

The 4GB limit applies to the HDD, not to partitons. You can always create partitions as large as the area which can be addressed by the driver. The built in IDE driver (called scsi.device) can address up to 4GB because it uses 32 bits to address a byte on the HDD. Everything above the 4GB limit cannot be accessed. If you write to it an area below the 4GB limit will be overwritten, probably destroying important data !!

SFS up to version 1.84 and PFS use special direct-SCSI commands. Without a replacement IDE driver these filesystems can address up to 8GB.

OS3.5, OS3.9 and IDEfix come with a replacement IDE driver which support new 64bit commands. With this driver and a file system which also supports these commands (the new FastFileSystem version 44, PFS or SFS) you can create partitions as big as you like on HDDs as big as you want.

*BUT* the new IDE driver is not built into the ROM and has to be loaded from the boot partition. This means that the boot partition must reside inside the lower 4GB of the HDD.

Third-party controllers like the Phase5 SCSI controllers have these 64bit commands built into the firmware and so with an appropiate file system (PFS or SFS) big HDDs with big partitions can be used without any patch.

Finally, all programs not supporting 64bit commands cannot be used with big HDDs. This includes Format, DiskSalv, Shapeshifter, PCTask, PCx etc.
Yes, you may not fully format partitions above the 4GB limit. Use quick-format only ! (this has been repaired with Boingbag2 of OS3.9, IIRC).

[Interceptor]

excellent! thanks for that info. much appreciated.

[Unknown_K]

Besides 4gb will hold the OS and ALOT of games.

I dont think I will ever use up the 3.2GB drive in my A1200, much better then the 80mb one it came with.

[D-Dan]

The 4GB limit applies to the HDD, not to partitons. You can always create partitions as large as the area which can be addressed by the driver. The built in IDE driver (called scsi.device) can address up to 4GB because it uses 32 bits to address a byte on the HDD. Everything above the 4GB limit cannot be accessed. If you write to it an area below the 4GB limit will be overwritten, probably destroying important data !!

Is it not possible to install TD64 for use with the built in IDE, tho', thus allowing directscsi on the internal IDE I/F?

[D-Dan]

Originally Posted by Unknown_K

Besides 4gb will hold the OS and ALOT of games.

I dont think I will ever use up the 3.2GB drive in my A1200, much better then the 80mb one it came with.

My current AmigaOS (Under emulation, but migrated directly from a real Amiga) is approx 5.1 Gig - and that's with only 3 games installed (I'm not much of a gamer) - so it is possible to fill Amiga up on a relatively large HD.

My last real Amiga had a 40Gig HD installed (with a 3rd party IDE controller)

[thomas]

Originally Posted by D-Dan

Is it not possible to install TD64 for use with the built in IDE, tho', thus allowing directscsi on the internal IDE I/F?

You cannot "install" TD64. TD64 is a name for one set of 64bit commands (the other one is NSD64). Either a drive supports TD64 or not. The internal IDE driver (scsi.device, as I mentioned before) does not support these commands and so you cannot access more than 4GB.

However you could patch the FastFileSystem (this is probably what you call "install TD64", which is something totally different) to use direct-SCSI commands. This will allow you to access up to 8GB on an A1200 as I mentioned before. Theoretically you could access up to 2TB, but the scsi.device has a bug which limits it to 8GB.

The same is true for NSDPatch. It does nothing more than to catch NSD64 commands and turn them into direct-SCSI commands. So still the 8GB limit applies.

The only way to extend the 8GB limit is to replace scsi.device. This can be done by the OS3.5/3.9 AmigaOS ROM Update or by IDEfix. As I already mentioned this is a software patch which has to be loaded after the boot process has already started, so the boot partition has to be accessible by the unpatched scsi.device (inside 4GB or 8GB, depending on the used file system).

However, there is a program on Aminet which lets you check if your installation is safe: http://uk.aminet.net/aminetbin/find?check4gb (the actual program to use from this archive is called CheckHD).

The TD64 archive contains a patch for FastFileSystem which makes it use TD64 commands (this is what I'd call "install TD64"). But as scsi.device does not support TD64 commands, this is of no use for the internal IDE bus. This patch is mainly for Phase5 SCSI controllers which support TD64 commands by default. So with FastFileSystem V43 (= TD64-patched V40) and a Phase5 controller you can use big HDDs without any additional patch.

[woody57]

Like many with larger than 4gig hd,s , no matter how carefully I tried , even with boing bag updates 1&2 on workbench 3.9

I could only get the first part of the drive to work and stay stable .

However what to me is an update in the last seven day off the latest Aminet files, is both simple to use [ come on I worked it out and I'm nearly braindead ]

And quick to install along with a host of tools to keep those partitions happy

So if your main reson to lameulate was because the " Old Girl" couldn't handle a big drive for WHD load files , this is the time to review your misconception,s

And hopefully our stalwart member Thomas , who has through thick and thin tried to help us sort out these " niggles "


Will FINALLY get a deserved break from the echo's of the Same Question again & again


All hail Thomas a master of patience and good manners , to me an unsung hero , who deserves the applause

[alexh]

AFAIK you can replace the scsi.device in your boot media by either

a) getting a pair of 27C400 EPROMS and creating your own modified KICKSTART ROM's.
b) getting an individual devices "Kick Flash" card.
c) getting a Elbox Flash card (cant remember the name off hand).

A little bit drastic just to use data above the 4GB limit before loading the TD64 capable IDE device driver but still one possible solution?

[Methanoid]

I see the ads for FastATA IV say "you can now use HDDs bigger than 127Gb"

Q: Does the standard A1200 not allow larger HDDs without this then?

Its getting quite hard to find HDDs UNDER 160Gb!!

[roy bates]

Originally Posted by Methanoid

I see the ads for FastATA IV say "you can now use HDDs bigger than 127Gb"

Q: Does the standard A1200 not allow larger HDDs without this then?

Its getting quite hard to find HDDs UNDER 160Gb!!

not in the os i dont think,the main problem is partition size.

i have a 10gig drive in one 1200 under 3.1 i just worry about going over the 4 gig partition limit.on this amiga the partitions are under 2gig each and the boot is 500mb.

[thomas]

Again the same nonsense!

There is no such thing like a 4GB partition limit!!

There is a 4GB harddrive limit!!

You cannot use more than the first 4GB of a harddrive with WB3.1.

You can connect a 160 GB harddrive, but it will be recognised as 8GB and only the first 4GB of it can be accessed.

There is software available which can make 8 Gb, 128 GB or 2 TB accessible. But without this software you can only use the first 4GB of the drive, no matter how many partitions you make and how small these partitions are. If you create partitions outside of the first 4GB of the drive (which is possible without error message unfortunately) you will sooner or later suffer data loss.

on this amiga the partitions are under 2gig each and the boot is 500mb.

I read this as if you have multiple (at least two) 2gig partitions and one 0.5gig. So you have at least 4.5gig used. This does not work. The second 2gig partition will at some point overwrite parts of the other two partitions. And you will only notice it when it is too late, when you find corrupted data in files or read errors and file system corruption.

Originally Posted by Methanoid

Its getting quite hard to find HDDs UNDER 160Gb!!

Flash memory is becoming more and more popular. The cheapest CF card outruns the Amiga's IDE easily speedwise. And it is absolutely quiet.

[roy bates]

ok thomas thankyou.im using idefix on this machine.

[rampartsagain]

never got hdtoolbox working ok with bigger hd more than 8gb but even this with 2 4gb partitions,under 3.1 kickrom i wonder how those guys in germany got bigger hd work on a project i saw on the net ,it is time for some one to unlock this for good .

[1time]

I am running on a 160gb disk.. with 6 3.9GB partitions.

No problem at all.

[ascp]

I have 32 gb sd-card with a boot partition of 1gb ffs and the rest as one partion of (pfs) ds. So far no corruptions - but everythings backedup just in case. Basically what i did was.

Created the bootpartition in winuae:
Installed classic wb and wb3.1
Installed the updated scsi.device and ffs that comes with classic wb "large drives" support.
Installed idefix97
Installed pfs and created the rest of space as a one partition with hdtoolbox.

Maybe i did some unnecessary steps. I'm not sure if i needed the scsi.device and ffs-update when using idefix.
But it's great having so much space on the amiga - i use diskimager to mount CD-iso:s and stuff.

[keitha1200]

I've only just returned to using my Amiga after 10 years, and it's been a learning curve for me.

My old 4gb 3.5" died (it was 12 years old) and I decided to use 120gb HD which I had sat in cupboard for the last 5 years (was new, never used) and all was fine at first! then the problems with missing data and unreadable files became rather apparent.

After some advice from Thomas the problem was sorted. To be honest: I'm only using a 3.5" because my 1200 is in a large PC tower, with cd/dvd/additional floppy/windows keyboard etc. My 600 on the other hand has a compact flash card, which works fine, however I feel (can't prove this) that the 600 was a little quicker, accessing data with it's older but smaller 2.5" ide HD.

Personal: If it's a wedge WHDload Amiga? I'd stick with the compact flash HD and an additional PCMCIA adapter and a compact flash card from transferring data.