Large hard drive on Amiga 4000 ?

[dougal]

I just removed the 160MB HD from my A4000 and installed a 40GB one.

HDTool of WB3.1 Install floppy disk can only allow me to use 4GB + 4GB + 900MB partitions.

Do I need to use SFS or something to make full use of the hard drive ?

 

[RichyV]

Firstly, yes the HDTool from that disk is pretty much redundant for >4GB disks.

Secondly, and unfortunately, under OS3.1 it isn't just a case of changing the FileSystem.

It's a few pages and I am trying to set this up on a WarpEngine SCSI device, but the principals are the same and you may find that my results help (hopefully...)

Here you go... https://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?47024-Large-capacity-drive-on-WarpEngine

BTW - I have now moved across to OS3.9 as it is really so much less painful..........

 

[dougal]

Yeah I plan to install 3.9 too once I get the A3640

 

[Buzzfuzz]

Yeah, you are also best off making the boot partition DH0 < 1GB, so like 950MB at most and then use SFS or PFS3, whichever you like most, for larger partitions.
Note that both SFS and PFS3 support up to 127 GB, actually PFS3 goes to 137 GB, but you will struggle even to fill up 40 GB ;-)

 

[-Acid-]

I'm using a 160Gb drive (think about 128Gb is usable), use SFS of PFS on all partitions but keep the boot partition under 4Gb (I keep mine at 2Gb to be safe) and then I personally use IDEFix97 to mount the other partitions past the 4Gb barrier (it also handles the DVD, CF and Zip drives). Even if you are only using a hard drive IDEFix97 is still fine to fix things, there are other ways but I find this is so much easier. If you start with Classic WB disk space will be displayed correctly in Workbench (not sure what you would need to install yourself to put it right) and when partitioning the drive in HDToolBox do not use the sliders. Instead when you read the drive information make a note of the number of cylinders and work out how many you need to set it to to get roughly the size you want.

 

[fitzsteve]

The partition size HDToolBox give you are wrong however you can calculate the true sizes. As you move the slider you will see it go up to 4gb and then reset to zero each overlap, you can then just count up the multiples of 4 as you go.

Make sure the boot partition is inside the first 4gb, keep it small (500mb is plenty) and then you can make the others any size you like but you must use a file system such as SFS/PFS3 up updated FFS from OS3.9. I recommend PFS3

You must also patch the scsi.device, you can use a tool like loadmodule to load in. Classic Workbench if you choose to use it had a facility built in, you can get an idea how this works from my guide here:

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

 

[Harrison]

Use HDInstTool instead of the standard HDToolkit because it correctly supports larger drives and shows the correct sizes.

Download it from: http://www.classicamiga.com/content/view/5006/175/

And some useful tutorials on installing a large HDD and also setting up SFS can be found here:

http://wiki.classicamiga.com/Hardware

 

[Matjam]

Resurrecting an old thread, in case anyone else with an A4000 is googling and stumbles across this thread.

I went down a very very long rabbit hole. I have an A4000 with 3.1 ROMs installed and a 16GB CF card connected to the IDE Master on the internal IDE port. I tried several combinations of scsi.device and filesystems and this is what works really well for me.

1. In WinUAE, I installed ClassicWB Full (you could probably use ADV but I didn't test) hardfile. I bought Amiga Forever so I had the Workbench 3.1 files legitimately ;-)
2. I booted up the ClassicWB install and then copied the scsi.device that is included in ClassicWB in DH0:MyFiles/LargeHD/128GB_Support/SCSI_v44_45_ChrisToni to devs:scsi.device. When you reboot ClassicWB you should see scsi.device 43.45 when you do a "version scsi.device"
3. reset the WinUAE emulator and then configured it to use my CF card as a hardfile. The instructions here are useful: https://16bitdust.wordpress.com/201...6-gb-compact-flash-card-with-winuae-and-pfs3/. It's key to start WinUA as administrator.
4. Using the above as a guide, I used the HDToolBox in the DH0:Tools dir to set up pfs AIO on two partitions, the first was a 2GB partition and the second was the rest of the CF card. Note that when you're resizing things it wraps at the 4GB mark, so make sure you size the first partition down to the smallest then increase it slowly until it gets to about 2-3GB (2GB seems enough for wb and apps).
5. I use PFS3 not PDS3 as the device type. PDS seemed to have trouble before I updated the scsi.device, though I suspect it might work now, I haven't tried. Honestly the performance doesn't suck.
6. It's good to note (as noted elsewhere) that it's easy to forget to hit enter on a text field. If you don't the value wont be saved.
7. Once the CF disk is partitioned, you reboot, and you should see DH0 and DH1 appear as NDOS.
8. I didn't trust the ClassicWB format, so I used the CLI: "format device dh0: name "Workbench" quick"
9. It should be noted that as your booted workbench may be DH0 then the new device might be DH0_0:, adjust accordingly.
10. Copy the complete workbench over; "copy DH0: DH0_0: all clone".
11. Turn off the WinUAE machine and remove the hardfile, leaving the CF disk device, and then boot it. It should boot up perfectly fine.

You can then plug the CF card into your machine. I use one of these from amazon. It worked perfectly, and mounts easily into a spare slot in the back of the machine.

I just copied about 4.5GB of data to my DH1: and nothing broke, so it seems to be working well. I get 1.5MB/sec using SysInfo from a SanDisk Extreme PRO 16GB card I had lying around.

 

[mkegruber]

You can then plug the CF card into your machine. I use one of these from amazon. It worked perfectly, and mounts easily into a spare slot in the back of the machine.

That Amazon adapter, what's the 2nd port next to the 3.5 IDE port?

 

[fitzsteve]

That Amazon adapter, what's the 2nd port next to the 3.5 IDE port?

Initially I thought that was a secondary 44pin IDE port (without buffering) but looking at jumper configuration it looks like it has two inputs and you use either the 40+mini molex power or the 44pin to drive it. I'd check with the documentation to be sure.