Installing Hard Drive Fujitsu MHK2120AT into A1200

Apologies if this is a very basic question, but I just can't get it to work and would really appreciate any help.

Years and years ago - I had an Amiga 1200 and only used it for playing games.
Insert floppy - press reset and away I went.

I still have an Amiga 1200, but I'd like to install a hard drive and install some of my old games.
Someone was thowing out an old Dell laptop, and I got the hard drive out of it -a Fujitsu MHK2120AT (12GB).
http://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/AU/....5inch_IDE.pdf

My plan was to try and get it working using Winuae and then transfer to my real machine. I got a USB enclosure, my pc detects it and I thought I was making progress.

When I boot up to the Workbench install disk, and fire up HDToolbox - it incorrectly determines the size/configuration of the drive and I don't know what values to provide manually (Cylinders, Heads, Blocks Per Track, Blocks Per Cylinder). What should I do?

- Is there a better tool I should use to initialise the drive?
- If I should use HDToolbox - can anyone help with the correct values?

I have very basic amiga experience so help needs to be fairly basic.
I'd really appreciate any pointers anyone could give me - thanks

[Arnie]

Try HDInsTools, available from aminet.

I have a 320gb MHZ Fujitsu HD and HDInsTools detects it.

[cpiac64]

i use 20 giga without problem, but i use original floppy "install" from os3.0 or 3.1

hdtoolbox from floppy read right size/configuration, next you need create partition minor 2 giga

[johnim]

hi have a look at my guides

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=61048

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=61180

but just miss the cf part out

Originally Posted by johnim

hi have a look at my guides

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=61048

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=61180

but just miss the cf part out

Your guides look amazing but my initial problem is that HDToolBox isn't returning correct values when I click "Read Configuration"


I've tried HDInstTool from Aminet but it came back with the message box "No device found".

The values returned from HDToolBox when I press Read Configuration are:
Cylinders: 1467
Heads: 1
Blocks Per Track: 16067
Blocks Per Cylinder: 16067
Reduced Write Current Cylinder: 1467
Write PreComp Cylinder: 1467
Size: -805801K (-786 Meg)

[cpiac64]

with hdtoolbox, new definition then read config and save on floppy

Originally Posted by cpiac64

with hdtoolbox, new definition then read config and save on floppy

When I use HDToolBox, New Definitions and Read Config - the incorrect values are returned (values shown above)

How do I get it to return the correct values, or can someone help me manually determine the values, or is there a better tool I should use?

[cpiac64]

on web
Capacity 12.0 GB
Number of Heads 4
Number of Cylinders (User) 14784

Originally Posted by cpiac64

on web
Capacity 12.0 GB
Number of Heads 4
Number of Cylinders (User) 14784

Many thanks for this.
Does anyone know how to calculate "Blocks Per Track" and "Blocks Per Cylinder"?

[cpiac64]

Originally Posted by ib2012

Many thanks for this.
Does anyone know how to calculate "Blocks Per Track" and "Blocks Per Cylinder"?

i dont remember


my toshiba 20gb
cyl 16383
heads 16
block for track 63
block for cyl 1008
park 16383
size (-132080) -128k

on aminet search patch for hdtoolbox is for large hd

[thomas]

Originally Posted by ib2012

The values returned from HDToolBox when I press Read Configuration are:
Cylinders: 1467
Heads: 1
Blocks Per Track: 16067
Blocks Per Cylinder: 16067
Reduced Write Current Cylinder: 1467
Write PreComp Cylinder: 1467
Size: -805801K (-786 Meg)

Why do you think these are not correct?

Originally Posted by cpiac64

my toshiba 20gb
cyl 16383
heads 16
block for track 63
block for cyl 1008
park 16383
size (-132080) -128k

You don't have drivers for large harddrives installed. Your system can only "see" 8 GB of a harddrive and can only access the first 4GB of it. If you create partions in the upper 4GB, you will sooner or later lose all your data.

Originally Posted by ib2012

Does anyone know how to calculate "Blocks Per Track" and "Blocks Per Cylinder"?

Size of Harddrive = Bytes per Block * Blocks per Track * Heads * Cylinders

Blocks per Cylinder = Blocks per Track * Heads

Or

Blocks per Cylinder = Size of Harddrive / Bytes per Block / Cylinders

Blocks per Track = Blocks per Cylinder / Heads

Originally Posted by thomas

Why do you think these are not correct?

I guess I was hoping that it would detect it as a 12GB drive, but looks like I was being hopelessly optimistic.
I fully appreciate that these kind of drives weren't around when the Amiga was popular.

I was also surpised to see Blocks Per Track being the same as Blocks Per Cylinder.

What should I do - just go with the default settings, create a partition and install workbench?

[thomas]

I guess I was hoping that it would detect it as a 12GB drive, but looks like I was being hopelessly optimistic.

It indeed recognised it as 12Gb, it just has trouble to print numbers bigger than 4GB. But if you calculate the size of the harddrive from cylinders / heads / sectors using my formular above, you'll see that it results in 12,067,987,968 bytes a.k.a. 12.1 GB a.k.a. 11.24 GiB.

The same problem will appear when you create partions: it will always display a number less than 4096 MB as partition size, but the real partition size is correct (n * 4096 + what it displays)

Originally Posted by thomas

You don't have drivers for large harddrives installed. Your system can only "see" 8 GB of a harddrive and can only access the first 4GB of it. If you create partions in the upper 4GB, you will sooner or later lose all your data.

What do you need to do to install drivers for large hard drives?

thanks

[thomas]

I am sure there are other threads in this forum which cover the topic already in every depth. These links might be a good start:

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=32256
http://thomas-rapp.homepage.t-online.de/4gb_faq.html