Large Hard Drive Installation

Justin

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Good morning all,

Right then, as some of you may know I had some real problems installing some large hard drives (above 60gb) I had write errors, wrongly reported drive sizes, overlapping disk writes and failiures all over the shop, I changed from SCSI to IDE and was still having the same issues.
the problem seems to stem from the A4000 3.1 roms having an NSDPatch issue, changing block sizes and RDBs make no difference, so here is what I have learnt, I hope this can save someone else weeks of pain.

Stage 1: WinUAE
1. Load Winuae with the same spec as your target Amiga

2. Setup a HDF with the name DH0

3. Install your OS (I used OS3.9 and will refer to this OS from now on) remember to also install Boing Bags 1 and 2.

Stage 2: Download Time
4. Leave Winuae and go and download classicWB from http://classicwb.abime.net

5. Download NSDPatch from http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/NSDPatch43_20

6. Unzipped the classicWB file to somewhere you will remember!

Stage 3: Back to WinUAE
7. Start Winuae with your OS3.9 HDF and add your newly unzipped classicWB HDF to the hard drive list and boot.

8. On the desktop you should now have an icon to install classicWB, hit that bad boy up, follow the on screen prompts and install.

9. Once it has installed, press F12 and remove your HDF leaving just the classicWB HDF and reboot winuae (look at your pretty shiney new classicWB install, nice isn't it?)

10. Now go and unzip the NSDPatch and install the fella. Once done exit out of Winuae.

Stage 4: Getting the Harddisk On
11. Hook up your new monster real HDD (SCSI or IDE)

12. Start Winuae and add your real hard drive to the hard drive list and boot

13. Open HDTools and find your real hard drive, install the drive and watch in awe as it finds your hard drive with the correct size and more importantly the correct geometry:) Partition the drive as you see fit, under the advanced tab select add/change filesystem, in the new window scroll down till you see SmartFileSytem, select it and then USE, now on each partition change the filesystem to CHF/00.

14. Save and Reboot
Now hopefully your workbench will now have some ghosted out uninitialised drives(y)


Stage 5: Formatting the Drives
16. Using the SFSFormat Command in Shell/CLI - the SFSFormat has the following syntax -
Code:
[B]sfsforma[/B]t DEVICE [COLOR=Blue]<device mount name>[/COLOR] NAME [COLOR=Blue]<volume name>[/COLOR]
so when you open a shell and type

Code:
SFSFORMAT DEVICE [COLOR=Blue]SDH0:[/COLOR] NAME [COLOR=Blue]AmigaOS[/COLOR]
the volume name can be anything like Games&Demos or MrFudgleStick - clearly use your own names in place of SDH0: and System. Do this for each partition, it should only take a few seconds per partition and now all your partitions should be available:D

*Remember to include the ":" at the end of the <device mount name>

6. Cloning the existing System
17. Now for the fun bit, after a reboot we are going to use COPY command to clone the existing WinUAE HDF and put this onto the newly formatted Harddrive

the copy command has the following syntax -
Code:
COPY [COLOR=Blue]<source device/volume>[/COLOR] <[COLOR=Red]switch[/COLOR]> [COLOR=Blue]<destination device/volume>[/COLOR]
so after a reboot, open a new shell and type the following into SHELL / CLI

Code:
COPY [COLOR=Blue]DH0:[/COLOR] [COLOR=Red]ALL[/COLOR] [COLOR=Blue]SDH0:[/COLOR]
in the above example we are using device names -
DH0: = the WinUAE HDF of ClassicWorkbench 3.9 we have setup earlier
SDH0: = the large SCSI/IDE harddisk that we setup earlier as well

so with your endevor use your own device/volume names in place of HD0: / SDH0:

after typing out the line in shell/cli press enter and now watch the blazing speed as your HDF is transfered to your real hard drive.

Stage 7: Testing Time
18. Once completed press F12 remove the HDF from the hard drives list and leave your real hard drive there to boot (fingers crossed you have now booted classicWB from your real HDD)

19. Move all your Apps, Games and Demos from your PC drives to where you want them on your Amiga hard drive, set everything you can up (WHLoad, IDEFix if you need it etc) run some files and test your new set up, all tickety boo? coolio:)

20. Now when you are happy with your set up, chuck that bad boy into your miggy and bask in the glory and pride from your endevours and marvel at all that extra space.
 
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Nice, easy simple to follow steps, you're a jawsome dude (y)

1 Vote here for sticky :)
 
@Juv

glad to see you got some life out of it in the end (where was my PM?!) =D

would be okay with you if I helped format the first post my friend?
 
format complete - now needs some pictures ;) =D
 
actually it might be nice to remove all the other posts just leaving the guide?
less clutter for new readers?
 
hi juv regarding no 7 and 8 where is the install icon
hi i was trying p96 version but found it in the os3.9 version thanks
 
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so are you saying the p96 version doesn't give you an istall icon on the desktop m8?

i shall have a look at that a bit later
 
juv does this have the complete (sfs)link system as it wont let me format drives
i copied the files eg fsfformat from the first link the wb3.0/68k to the c: and this works now
 
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Excellent guide but after reading a few threads over on eab over the past few days, would it be worthwhile adding example mask & maxtransfer settings stage 4?.
 
maybe there are some bits not included in all the classicWB setups, i used the full version

---------- Post added at 14:06 ---------- Previous post was at 14:05 ----------

Excellent guide but after reading a few threads over on eab over the past few days, would it be worthwhile adding example mask & maxtransfer settings stage 4?.


i thought this was only a problem for CF cards as they don't have any buffers, where as a hard drive does
 
Using SFS the max transfer setting is set to "0x1FE00" this is a default and I suggest not to change this as it will return currupt data back from the device.

to get the SFS commands to work you will need to add them to the C: directory - you will find them in the SHELL directy of the SFS directory that you download.
 
I am now confused, I thought that the Max HD partition size for any Amiga was 4 GB?
Is this not the case if you create your HD in this way?

I have a SCSI 18GB unit that I would love to "fully" use on my GVP card in the A2000.
I have 1.3, 2.04 and 3.1 ROMs in there on a multi boot board.

I also have a VXL-30 with VXL-32 with 8MB RAM and have OS3.9.

None of it is installed at the moment as I am trying to resolve the 4GB limiting issue before pressing ahead.

Is this thread the way to go for success?

k6
 
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