Tutorial:- Large Disk Support for Amiga OS (Workbench)

fitzsteve

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Hi!

This is my first attempt at a tutorial Video for Large Disk support, I've always avoided doing this due to the complexity but as so many people have asked... Please note I cannot accept any liability if you misuse tools like Diskpart and loose your Data. I recommend you read up on the documentation for all software demonstrated.

The aim of this guide is to show you the steps to prepare a large drive for Amiga use, as you might know the original IDE device has a 4gb limit so we need to patch this and the file system to allow larger drives to be used. The Video covers this along with partitioning the drive, adding the file system and even getting Workbench onto the drive.

I hope the tutorial helps and is not overly complicated, please note you will need to have a reasonably good understanding of AmigaOS and be familiar with WinUAE/Windows. I'm using Classic Workbench for my guide, the steps will be similar in a normal Workbench releases but the scsi.device patching in 3.1 would be a little more complex.

I will try and help with any questions but there are a lot of different file systems and eventualities involved, some can be extremely complex depending on your target Amiga.

Thanks for watching! =D

[m]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqUiNARd-bg[/m]

If you're a beginner and need a step by step guide to setting up a more basic install you can see my other tutorial here:

https://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=42411
 
Hi Steve, I haven't watched the tutorial yet but managed to set up a 60gb 2.5" hdd using sfs file system and patched scsi.device which is working on the SX1 and appears to be fine. I was wondering though, do you need to change the max transfers with a real hdd like a CF card cause i don't remember changing them.
 
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Hi Steve, I haven't watched the tutorial yet but managed to set up a 60gb 2.5" hdd using sfs file system and patched scsi.device which is working on the SX1 and appears to be fine. I was wondering though, do you need to change the max transfers with a real hdd like a CF card cause i don't remember changing them.

Yes you do, only some very old HDD and with real SCSI setups you can leave them safely.
 
watchd ya pFS vid a few times now steve yep and a few after in the play list, well done

Ive just come across this site with the majic number 911 :)
have no need to try his disk but as I done a search for it on here n no 1s posted I might as well do it, he also has utube vids all 4 of em


this is probably the wrong place to post about a boot disk but its as good as any and am sure some 1 with better skills than me can move it to an aproperate place if needed, well heres the linky
http://amiga911maker.site11.com/index-1024.htm
 
Hi Steve, thanks for this guide, going to have a bash tonight with a Buddha Flash Pheonix and a 16gb CF.

just one question, when you updated the SCSI device the three options were for 600/1200/4000... Does classic workbench have a 2000 equivalent too?

thanks
 
Hi Mate,

Check the Buddha flash doc's but I'm pretty sure it supports TD64 commands already and also comes with IDEFix97 package. All you need to do is make sure you use SFS or PFS3aio and you're good to go.

So just follow the bit about preparing the drive and then install IDEFix97 :)

No need to patch any scsi.device unless you are using the native Amiga IDE
 
Just to say a big thanks Steve... really appreciate the help... four hours later and after a bit of trial end error its up and running. I sort of took the easy way out and went for four 4gb partitions but the Buddha is running perfectly and now I have a 16gb CF, all my system and WHDload stuff is transferred and the three physical HD's are now out so it doesn't sound like an air raid siren when I fire it up anymore:)

Great tutorial.

Cheers
 
Great Tutorial... But...

Great Tutorial... But...

Hi,
I have had a 4GB CF card in my Amiga 1200 forever and decided that an upgrade was due as i've pretty much filled it.
I now have a 16GB CF and have managed to follow this video up to testing it in WinUAE using IDE0.
Unfortunatly it does not boot. Nor does it boot in my A1200. What could be the problem?

I am using OS3.9 with Classic Workbench.

Thanks in advance.

- - - Updated - - -

OK. Headscratch later, got it sorted. (I didnt tick Bootable for DH0 :huh:)
Brilliant tutorial. Thanks very much for this.
 
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Hmm. So maybe not. When copying DH0: to the CF DH0: I'm getting a PFS-III Error Requester
Device Alert DH0_0:
ALERT:
Wrong index block id

My DH0: is only 2GB which will cover what I want to put on it now and the remaining 14GB for Data which I can them populate later.

I've done some googling and found an article regards this error but if is supposed to be fixed in the version I'm using. Any Ideas?
 
Are you doing this on PC? If so try another card reader.
 
Hmm. Don't think I have any others for CF.
I am using PC yes.
 
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Hmm. Don't think I have any others for CF.

I had similar problems in the past and it was the card reader that caused them :(

If you can find another then it's a good thing to test.

Good luck, I hope you can figure it out. My concern doing this tut is that there is a Pandora's box of potential issues.
 
Intersting thing. I tried it with SFS and got the same result. Errors on writing to disk. Could it be anything to do with block size you think? I know CF's are more optimised for FAT32 and PC based OS's so maybe this could be an issue?
 
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