CF as Amiga HDD problems

I finally decided to swap the 2.5" HDD in my A600 for a CF card.

I purchased:

1, CF card to 2.5" IDE adapter
2, 4GB Kingston CF card

The A600 setup is KS3.1, 2MB Chip and 2MB Fast, plus CF card and adapter.

My problem is I can't get more than the first partition on the card to be detected and seen by Workbench. Any ideas?

I've tried partitioning the CF card using WinUAE, and also on a real A600.

This is what I did:

1. Connected CF card to PC using USB card reader.
2. Added -disableharddrivesafetycheck flag to WinUAE shortcut.
3. Added the CF as a HDD in WinUAE with UAE setting and read/write ticked.
4. Booted WinUAE with a Workbench 3.1 Install ADF.
5. Set HDToolkit datatype to uaehf.device
6. Started HDToolbox and it detected the CF card.
7. Used Change Drive type and Define New, with automatic detection to get the settings. Then saved the changes.
8. Setup some partitions as DH0: 200MB, DH1: 1800MB and DH2: 1800MB.
9. Saved the changes again and rebooted WinUAE.
10. The DH0: partition showed up as DH0:NDOS, but the other 2 partitions didn't appear.
11. Formatting the DH0: partition worked fine, and copying a Workbench 3.1 disk onto it and testing it allowed the CF card to boot in WinUAE, and also when tested in a real A600.

I cannot however get any additional partitions to show up in Workbench and have no idea what I'm doing wrong. However, on reloading HDToolbox the additional partitions are still displayed in the partitioning window as being there. Ideas?

I also tried setting the card up on the A600 from scratch. Connected the card using the CF to IDE adapter. Booting using an Install 3.1 disk and using HDToolbox as above to define the drive, and then partition it, but on rebooting again only the first partition is ever seen and used.

I expect HDToolbox is having trouble with the CF.

A later version of HDToolbox will stop this happening. ;)

Kin

Ah OK. Cheers. I will give it a try.

OK, I'm pleased to say I now seem to have got it working. :)

And the problem wasn't strictly an Amiga software one. However HDToolbox wasn't giving me the error I needed to sort this problem out.

I ended up trying HDInstTool (which I normally use). However, when I tried to save the partition changes to the drive, Windows (not WinUAE) was throwing up a "harddrive: DH0: block zero write failed!" error.

I had read about this problem with CF cards before so knew how to fix it. The OS was not allowing writing to a non-empty disk. So Windows needed to be told that the drive was empty before it would release control and allo it to work with WinUAE.

To do that, for anyone else who encounters a similar issue, and this mainly effects Vista and Win7 users, do the following:

1, go to Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Command Prompt

2 ,Type the following:

Code:

---

diskpart
list disk
select disk n (replace "n" by the number of the disk you want to  clean. Warning:  Make sure it is the right one!)
clean

---

3, Once it has reported cleaned remove the card/usb reader from the system and then reconnect it. It might ask if you want to format the card. Say no.

And once I had done this, running though the same process I outlined in my original post, but using HDInstTool instead of HDToolbox, it worked and I now have a partitioned and formatted CF card HDD. :)

I will have to add all of this to a guide when I get time.

OK, still having some trouble with this. I'm having to use HDInstTool instead of HDToolbox because after partitioning the CF card and rebooting the partitions are still not all appearing and I then have to go back into HDInstTool and format them from in there. They then appear.

However once formatted, if I try to copy the contents of one of the ClassicWB HDFs over to the first partition (DH0:) it starts throwing up loads of check sum errors.

I understand this is related to the max transfer rate set for the partitions, so I've been trying various settings for this and am still getting loads of checksum errors during the copy process.

And once that is complete, rebooting just throws up more checksum errors even if not booting directly from the card.

So, any more ideas anyone? I've now wasted a few hours trying to get this to work and no closer to getting it to work.

Try with a different CF brand. Prefer Sandisk units.

Also remember the mask value 7xf and a c: 0xFFFFFFFC. Maxtransfer must be 0x001FE00 or less.

Annoyingly I only have 2 4GB Kingston CF cards at the moment. I've been reading that many people seem to prefer Sandisk cards. Any specific model of Sandisk card to try?

And thanks for the values. I've tried different low Maxtransfer values and that hasn't helped, but will give it another go.

It is annoying to get so close, finally managing to make the partitions and format them, but then not able to copy anything to them.

just to say I have similar adapter and the same CF card and they work fine on my A1200

hope you solve your problem, just a an idea
perhaps patch the scsi device

which WB are you using ?? I presume wb3.1

@cosmicfrog

Can you tell me the partition settings you are using with this card? Max transfer, mask etc? so I can try the same settings.

Regarding patching the scsi.device. Do you have a link to a patch I can try?

not easy for me to do at the moment, I`ll try next week

scsi patch
http://aminet.net/package/driver/media/SCSI4345p