sfs cf/hardrive guide

[gounderset]

Hi! I see you use a 2GB disk in your guide. Im just wondering if I can follow this guide setting up a 32GB CF card? Or do I need to do something else since it is over 4GB?

Best regards
Geir Ove

 

[johnim]

hi you can use bigger just try to keep the boot partition below 2gb i always use 500mb

 

[gounderset]

Hi! Thanks I managed to make 4 partitions. first one 600 and second 1500mb and the last two about 15gb each. The two big partition show wrong size (one 1500mb and the other 1700mb), but I will try install OS3.9 and see what happend then

Geir Ove

 

[-Acid-]

Anything over 4GB will report the wrong size in workbench but all data will be written to it correctly when using SFS. If you put the card in your pc and use it in winuae it will show the correct sizes though.

 

[mfilos]

Unless you load a newer scsi.device so you won't have any issues with wrong sizes (except from HDInstTools or HDtoolbox (3.1 version) that reports non correct sizes but HDs work just fine once setup)

 

[-Acid-]

Does OS 3.9 correct that by the way?

 

[mfilos]

Yeah. OS3.9's HDToolBox is the best tool to initialize and prepare partitions on big hard drives.
I always use this tool just to be sure

But even BB2's updated scsi.device ISN'T enough to correct the >4GB hard drive issue.

 

[-Acid-]

So does a combination of SFS and OS3.9 make the drives sizes appear correctly in WB? or we just going to be stuck with how it is in 3.1 with SFS?

 

[mfilos]

To be able to use big hardrives without problem you need both SFS or PFS3 or newest version of FFS (although I highly recommend SFS or PFS3) AND a newest scsi.device loaded at startup.

For SFS filesystem the best scsi.device imho is Doobrey's 44.2.
For PFS3 filesystem the best scsi.device imho is Cosmos's 43.47

 

[-Acid-]

Ah thanks, I've only used SFS so will be sticking with that.

 

[fgh]

Just to clarify:

HDToolbox - even from os2.0 - will be able to set up partitions above 4GB limit.
However without a patched scsi.device, any write access to the area above 4GB will 'wrap around' and destroy data below the 4gb limit.
So having the size appear correctly in WB should not be your main concern

The old HDToolbox versions doesn't report the total size of the device correctly, but as it only ever accesses the RDB of your harddrive/CF this doesn't matter as long as the drive size is read correctly from the device.

Another thing that is rarely mentioned is that you still need to make sure that any program accessing the harddrive directly (Amiga OS <3.5 format command, ReOrg, DiskSalv, AmibackTools, QuarterbackTools, DynamiCache, ShapeShifter, PC-Task, PCx and others) does not try to access any partition above 4GB.
They will still destroy data, even if a new file system and scsi.device is setup correctly.

 

[johnim]

added new scsi device in first post thanks mfilos

 

[julezcourt]

many thanks, for this very useful guide....