Hard Drive questions

[User2921]

Hey guys, please excuse my noob-ish-ness here, but I'm still learning

So, I've been reading and asking questions relating to hard drives. I should mention that I have an a3000. There are two physical SCSI drives in the computer, and just recently, the boot drive has just stopped working (?) and I can no longer boot without a floppy. Interesting thing is, when it boots, wb can see the OTHER drive, but not the boot drive. Very frustrating, since I don't have the wb disks that came with the a3000, and there was a ton of great software on that drive that is now lost. But I digress...

From what I understand, the smartest way to go about dealing with physical hard drives is to get a Buddha board or equivalent IDE board. Uhm....what other boards are out there that are equivalent? I can't find any and the Buddha seems to be unavailable anywhere that I look. VERY frustrating. But totally understandable, when dealing with vintage/niche equipment. I'm not terribly concerned about a CF but wouldn't mind eventually putting one where the second hard drive is located physically, which happens to be the spot where a second floppy drive would go.

I am still not certain how I'd go about partitioning drives that are >4gb, if I can use the IDE I'm sure I won't find much <4gb. Can wb see the physical drive and make partitions of proper size? I have 3.1 roms and 3.1 workbench installation disks to hopefully make this work. Can I make the drive bootable? Help!

Thanks guys.

 

[ajk]

I don't know about the Buddha or other IDE boards particularly, but as far as the 4GB limit goes:

You can use a larger drive as long as you just keep the partitions small. The 3.1 partitioning tools will work to at least 127GB I believe, they may just show funny values. Also, you can get past the limitation by updating the IDE "driver" (=scsi.device) and using a more modern filesystem than FFS.

This still means that during the first boot, when only the things in the kickstart ROM are available, you need to have a small partition in the first part of the drive it can find. But once an updated scsi.device loads up (IDEFix, OS3.9, etc. - there are many options) then you see all the rest too.

Completely updating and burning a new kickstart EPROM is also possible to get around the initial limit, but this is probably an advanced project for later, and may not apply to the A3000 depending on how you load the kickstart up in the first place.

Also, there are SCSI-IDE (and also -SATA) adapters and bridges available. They are not always very cheap, as I guess not many people need them, but if you can get one, you can continue using the existing SCSI controller with modern drives. Again though I don't know about the A3000 controller in detail, but at least such a converter works great in the A4000 I have one in.

 

[abraXXious]

Golden rule of thumb for large partitions is to keep your boot partition small. For instance, OS 3.9 (the latest OS for classic Amigas) with boingbag updates, some extra libs, MUI etc etc etc installed will run up to around 40 mb, so make it 500 mb to make sure you never run out of space.

Dont worry about making any other partitions yet. Get your boot partition set up (use SFS or PFS for god sakes). If you install 3.9 then your troubles are over as it supports >4gb drives/partitions out of the box.

If you are using 3.1 then you simply download the TD64 (I THINK thats what its called) patche from Aminet, or IdeFix97 and then the 4gb limit is no more.

Then simply go to HDToolbox again and set up your other partitions any size you wish.

IMPORTANT: YOU CANNOT TOUCH THE SIZE/TYPE ETC OF YOUR ORIGINAL BOOT PARTITION OR YOU WILL LOSE ALL DATA ON IT!!!

Hope this helps.

---------- Post added at 17:56 ---------- Previous post was at 17:54 ----------

Oh and those scsi to ide bridges are flaky as hell, in fact, I recently purchased one for an a3000..... does not work on it at all, so I used it with my GVP Combo 040, works with it, but very flaky.

Maybe it is just the one I got. I thought my scsi troubles were over. Nope, after paying $100.00 for it it just sits in a drawer.

I might dig it out this weekend and see if I can get it to play nice with ANY of my scsi miggies.

 

[User2921]

So, the more I dig around, the more I realize it is going to be pretty tough to find an IDE controller board. I see that the Buddha boards are not in production any more. Does anyone know of a different, comparable setup?

Thanks!

 

[Kin Hell]

@ esc

Your Amiga will not be as fast as it is with SCSI, if you put an IDE controller in it.

If you are booting from Floppy & seeing the second drive & not the Boot Drive, the chances are is has rolled over & died one way or another.

Your best bet is buy another 50 Pin SCSI II drive & try to stay inside 4GB to avoid the TD64 patch. There have been lots of SCSI drives available on Amibay over the years, so a bit of a trawl or placing an Ad for one just might get you the result you need. The other Bay is also an option but at least in here, you should have a better experience & get what you actually need.

I'm sure anyone in here supplying you a SCSI Drive for your A3K could do so without even blinking an eye & all you need to let them know is the Version of Workbench your Old drive was running.

As a matter of Interest, have you tried booting with a WB Install Disk, then run HD Toolbox to see if the boot Drive is seen? It may be a simple case that the MBR (Master Boot record) has become corrupted & no longer boots. You could always take Anti-Static precautions, whip the lid off, pull both Molex connectors from the drives with the A3K powered off. Then plug one Molex at a time into each HD & see if one of them does not spin up. If one fails to to this, you have a dead HD. If they both Spin up individually, it might just be you MBR, especially if the Boot Drive is just a Single Partition.

All the Best.

Kin

 

[rkauer]

@Kin: sorry to be pedantic, but MBR is a pc-world thing. The Amiga have a bitmap of the HD stored in the boot sector simply called bootblock.

 

[Kin Hell]

@ Rogerio

You're quite right chap, apologies.

@ esc

But if you have a single Partition on the boot drive, & the bitmap (bootblock) is corrupted, no Partition will be seen or work from boot. Likewise if you boot from floppy.

The only real way to determine if the drive is dead is to see (listen) if it spins up when powered on. If it does spin up, QBTools or DiskSalv might be able to recover it for you.

Sorry for the MBR thing.

Kin

 

[User2921]

Thanks a lot for the help, guys. I can't hear the thing spin up...so it must just be a dead drive. Unfortunately, this is a second-hand drive, and there was lots of good stuff on there that I wanted to keep! Oh well, no use crying over spilled milk.

So, what if I used the SCSI for the boot partition, and perhaps some gaming/etc, but then got an IDE controller and a CF to easily transfer stuff from the PC. Is that a doable scenario? Or would I need to run all SCSI or all IDE?

Thanks again.

 

[commodorejohn]

That's probably doable, but if you're going to be using SCSI and buying an expansion card, you might do better to get a USB controller so you can use a USB flash drive - simpler and easier than CF, though I don't know how Zorro USB controllers compare with IDE controllers price-wise.

Alternatively, you could just snag a SCSI CD-ROM drive and use CD-RWs to transfer things to the Amiga...

 

[rkauer]

@esc: don't assume anything if the drive is connected to the SCSI data cable.

Disconnect the drive from the data cable and keep only the molex power connector in and try again.

Some drives have a not-so-dumb-as-you-may-think jumper called "Motor_ON", which will not let the drive spin up until the SCSI controller ask it to do so. This jumper is good to preserve a weak power supply from a nasty power requirement from cold boot, so it let the drives spin up one at a time.

Check if this jumper is present/absent and put/remove it and test again.

 

[User2921]

@esc: don't assume anything if the drive is connected to the SCSI data cable.

Disconnect the drive from the data cable and keep only the molex power connector in and try again.

Some drives have a not-so-dumb-as-you-may-think jumper called "Motor_ON", which will not let the drive spin up until the SCSI controller ask it to do so. This jumper is good to preserve a weak power supply from a nasty power requirement from cold boot, so it let the drives spin up one at a time.

Check if this jumper is present/absent and put/remove it and test again.

Thanks for the help Now, there isn't any Motor_ON mode. The only jumpers I have are to identify the SCSI ID (this one being 6, the other being 5) and the termination (both are in on this one and the other drive).

Now, I removed the cable from the back and powered up with the power connectors still on...and it made some sound. Weird. Not sure what is going on here...I appreciate all the help guys.

 

[rkauer]

Which model is the drive? (Very) Few have a firmware to set those features.

 

[User2921]

Well, I cleaned the drive, disconnected and reconnected the jumpers, booted with the 3.1 install floppy in the drive and voila, the drive was recognized. However, I tried to format it (because for the life of me, I couldn't get it to work) and it said there were all kinds of errors. For what it's worth, it was a tiny 120MB drive...so I swapped it out for a 4.1gb SCSI 50-pin that I found, and am currently trying to format that one instead. Wish me luck.

 

[commodorejohn]

Best o' luck. Were you able to salvage the data off the drive, at least?

 

[User2921]

I wasn't able to salvage anything. Granted, I didn't put forth TOO much effort. I suppose it's all part of the learning process, and being able to populate my amiga with software that I intentionally install will ensure that I am intimately familiar with what is on my computer So all is not lost.

For what it's worth - Thanks a lot to everyone for the help. Very impressed with the community here...

 

[Kin Hell]

Good to hear you had some kind of result.

Once you'd gotten to the Desktop & could actually see the failing drive, what recovery software did you try?

QuaterBack Tools & DiskSalv are usually very good. I don't know what else to suggest, but try these if you haven't already. Iirc, there is an unformat option in these tools too.

All the Best & well done so far.

Kin