CF HDD installation problem

[steve19550]

Hi, need help!
I have a 1200 with 4Gb CF HDD from Amigakit, A pcmcia adaptor also from Amigakit.
Worked perfectly until I became a bit overzelous with DOPUS 4 and caused irrecoverable damage to the boot partition. Subsequent attempts to "fix" it have caused hair pulling fits of anguish!
The CF drive came pre setup with 3 partitions, 500mb, ~1.6Gb and ~1.6Gb.
I put Workbench 3.0 on using the install and set of w/b disks.
Needless to say, I have created a set of working copies to install from.
All went well and worked perfectly as advertised until my "mishap".
Can anyone help me repartition and reformat my hdd?
I have install and the rest of the set of w/b 3.0 disks
I can get hd toolkit up but can't get it to partition the drive.
I can get the horizontal bar representing the disk and the gadget arrow for sizing the partition, each time I try I end up with only the LAST partition showing....:help:
So from the create partition button press what do I do? I assume that it's selected the correct drive parameters as there are no warnings flashing up and I havn't changed anything else.
The drive is at prsent totally unrecognised so it will have to be a complete reinstall.
any advice appreciated
Thanks
Steve

 

[AndyLandy]

Might be worth hitting Aminet for the most-recent version of HDInstTools if you don't have it already. http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/hdinst and see if that can partition your CF card.

 

[steve19550]

Hi Andy,
Thanks for replying.
I have the latest hdtools. Burning the midnight oil until 4.30 am....
I've managed to get a partition formatted and running as HD0: It's about 100Mb and w/b3.0 had gone on ok. Works.
The problem I'm now having is how do I partition the rest of the drive, (~3.8ishGb)
I want a system partition 100mb and two partitions of ~1.8Gbish each.
I have a nagging feeling that I should of partitioned the drive first, then installed the O/s on HD0: ??
This may seem obvious to you but ...... I've managed, in my efforts to install w/b 3.0 on the hard disk, to install w/b 3.0 my install floppy - twice...... missing somthing somewhere!!!
Of course the 100Mb boot./system partition as HD0: with W/b 3.0 and ffs I've managed to create boots annoyingly perfectly......
more help please.....
steve

 

[arnljot]

have you had a read through here?
https://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=4142

 

[steve19550]

Arnljot,
Thanks for the link, very interesting.. Well done.
At the risk of sounding totally clueless,
The main bent of the article was to set up a hdd for use with WinUAE?
I will get into emulators later but for now am just using my 1200 as a virgin (!) machine, playing games off disk or using the HDD.
What is the best file system to employ, without having to buy anything else, that will be most flexable in future?
I have managed to get the cf drive going with ffs, - with only a 100Mb system partition!!!
Must of missed somthing...
I thought that I'd partitioned the disk with three partitions.....
do you create the system partition, HD0:, then go on to create two more, HD1: and HD2: ~1.8Gb each? - its a 4Gb CF drive.
There is no problem with HD tools recognising or identifying the drive type.
Thanks for bearing with me.
Cheers
Steve

 

[steve19550]

Andy and Arnljot,
Thanks, re-read Arnljot's excellent article, light on top of head came on and I now ( after 3 hours!!) have 3 partitions, Fast file System and Workbench 3.0 installed on HD0: ( at least I know what to do now) - I think......
I still don't fully understand the differences between Fast and Custom file systems.....

Amiga Dos, If you don't know, it can be quite confusing. I have come across a number of Amiga users who seem to believe the CLI is best left to the men in white coats and tall pointed hats!!
I have no trouble with Dos or Windows ( wash mouth out with soap!!!) I am a degree qualified electronics engineer of 30+ years standing, was in at the dawn of the home computer world and have used them all my working life. For some reason I just find it hard to get my head round amiga dos. Strange as it may sound it's mainly FEAR preventing more experimentation... Write a short pic control program, no problem, bit of C+ programming no problem, fit and set up a RAID Array on my windows pc - no problem .......... copy a disk on the amiga from the cli prompt - AAAAAGGHHHH!

I'll wait until I find my other two (working) cf cards and use one to back up and the other to play with.
I suppose my next project will have to be an accelerator card.................
Thanks for your help overcoming this mental block I'd developed.
I knew it was time to ask for help when I managed to install the w/b 3.0 system onto the INSTALL floppy disk -- TWICE.......

Thanks again
Steve

 

[chain]

dont use custom filesystem, this is reserve for "alien" filesystems like msdos, mac os etc. stick with amiga fastfilesystem at the beginning

 

[steve19550]

Thanks Chain!
One more problem sorted.

Cheers
Steve

 

[Merlin]

I'm going to move this to AmiOracle, as it's probably a worthwhile read for others. Excellent stuff!

 

[r0jaws]

.......the CLI is best left to the men in white coats and tall pointed hats!!....

Well done on getting it sorted out. I'm not sure Grand Wizards of the KKK are deemed to be experts in Amiga CLI though.