Not a DOS Disk - More Hard Drive `Joys`

[roberthazelby]

Afternoon all,

After continued hard drive problems I've swapped the Amiga hard drive over to a Seagate that had come freshly out of an old Xbox.

I partition the drive using Fast File System 39.27 so that I have a workbench partition of 1982mb, and two other partitions of 3075mb and 3004mb.

I install WB on the smallest partition, install a mass of games on the others, and enjoy an hour or so of gaming before turning the machine off.

Later on I decide to tinker with the Amiga a bit more, so turn it back on and all of a sudden I'm informed that DH0 is now not a DOS disk! Right, so from me having the machine powered off for a few hours it's gone from being a DOS disk to NOT?! Crazy!

Is there anything I can do to get this partition back up and running again? I do dearly love tinkering around on the Amiga, but it's truly terrible disk system is one thing I really don't miss since getting a PC. A mere incorrect glance at the Amiga and the hard drive throws a wobbly.

Any help/suggestions would be appreciated.

Edit: This gets even better! I decide to format DH0:... I do this and then for some reason DH1 then decides its got block errors. Pretty impressive considering that it was free from them only 10 minutes previously, and I'd not even re-booted. I'm slowly getting to my wits end with this. I've been trying for almost a week to get a stable disk system and I can see that me packing the Amiga away is fast approaching.

Edit 2: Decided to install OS3.9. Have got this installed, and have ensured that all 3 partitions have the latest FFS on them. So far,so good. I then reboot and go to format the non bootable partitions and when I try to do a `quick format` nothing happens. I can still move the mouse pointer, but the `format` options window is still displayed, but you can't do anything with it.

I am sure I'm doing something wrong, but go knows what.

Rob

[_ThEcRoW]

For the symptoms you describe it's likely a hard drive crash. Partition screws and such without a reason are nothing good.

[sarek2k]

Did you remeber to unlock the xbox drive when you took it out of the xbox? i am not saying this is causing your problems but could be a factor!

[thomas]

I partition the drive using Fast File System 39.27 so that I have a workbench partition of 1982mb, and two other partitions of 3075mb and 3004mb.

You cannot use more than the first 4GB of a HDD with Kick 3.0. If you write to one of the partitions behind the 4GB border, you actually write to the area below 4GB also. So that's the reason why one partition gets corrupted while writing to another one.

However, with OS3.9 and the AmigaOS ROM Update active plus the FastFileSystem V45 it should work without problems. Did you create an emergency disk and boot from that before you installed OS3.9 ?

Also do you have Kickstart 3.1 (V40) ? OS3.9 will not work with Kick 3.0 (V39).

What kind of Amiga is that and where is the HDD connected to ?

[rare_j]

Thomas, can that really be true? All this time I've heard that you can have as many partitions as you like with KS3.0 and FFS as long as they're under 4GB each. I thought that as long as you used HDInstTool you were ok.

So I just want to double check: Using FFS and KS3.0 you can never reliably go above the 4GB disk space limit?

Does using IDEFIX have any affect on this issue?
What if you use an IDE splitter and two physical volumes?

[Jope]

It's best to have SFS or PFS3 in this case, as the old FFS doesn't support large disks even with idefix.

So please, at least get the newest FFS if you insist on using FFS.

[thomas]

Originally Posted by rare_j

Thomas, can that really be true? All this time I've heard that you can have as many partitions as you like with KS3.0 and FFS as long as they're under 4GB each.

You can have as many partitions as you like as long as *all together* are less than 4GB. You cannot go beyond the 4GB limit without 64bit support.

I thought that as long as you used HDInstTool you were ok.

HDInstTool is as good as HDToolbox. It does not matter which program you use. It's a matter of drivers, not of partioning tools.

HDInstTool might show you the correct size of the drive and let you create partitions on the entire drive. Both thing where HDToolbox might fail. But it does not solve the problem that the file system is not able to access anything above the 4GB limit of the drive.

So I just want to double check: Using FFS and KS3.0 you can never reliably go above the 4GB disk space limit?

Yes, correct.

Does using IDEFIX have any affect on this issue?

It solves one half of the problem. The problem is the 32bit interface between the device driver and the file system. So you have to change both in order to use 64bit commands. IDEfix changes the device driver to support 64bit commands. Now you also need a file system which uses them.

File systems with 64bit support are PFS, SFS and FFS Version 44 and above.

What if you use an IDE splitter and two physical volumes?

Then you can use up to 4GB on each (together 8GB).

[Jope]

IIRC there was some IDE controller that automatically splitted the drives into 4GB chunks..

Was there a software solution for that too?

Not that I personally approve, I still like my drives as one big partition, if at all possible. :-)

[rare_j]

Originally Posted by thomas

You can have as many partitions as you like as long as *all together* are less than 4GB. You cannot go beyond the 4GB limit without 64bit support.

Oh dear. Not only have I misunderstood the issue, I've given bad advice to others on other forums.
This information should be in the forum faq.

[thomas]

Originally Posted by Jope

IIRC there was some IDE controller that automatically splitted the drives into 4GB chunks..

Elbox' FastATA (Powerflyer) does this. It's optional, though.

Was there a software solution for that too?

Don't know of any.

Not that I personally approve, I still like my drives as one big partition, if at all possible. :-)

With a controller with a modern firmware this is possible with HDDs of any size. For example any Phase5 SCSI controller, FastATA or Buddha. Only in combination with a 64bit-cappable file system of course.

[OddbOd]

Originally Posted by Jope

Was there a software solution for that too?

Yes.

[Jope]

Thanks, Oddbod!