@Moxee

I recently had problems with the hard drives in my A1 XE G3. I changed the battery, which fixed things for a day or so. Then I found if I plugged a different power lead into the drive it worked good as gold for about a month. When it started playing up again I replaced the PSU and now it just works fine all the time.

@Moxee

Quote:

Moxee wrote: @Framiga Quote: have you checked if the 2nd partition is setup correctly? (same Mask, MaxTransfer and dosbuffers as the first one) OK, I just tried it with your suggestion of all the partitions having the same settings. It still won't format any partitions other than the first one. Could there be something wrong with the format program?

you can play with dosbuffers as you wish (for that large partitions i would rise them a bit).

The only 2 sensible settings are MaxTransfer and Mask. (must be identical on ALL your HDs)

If all the given suggestions won't works, i would start to think to a defective HD.

Did you try to reduce the partitions size? If i got it right, you have a 250GB HD divided in 2 identical partitions (that's means a booting partition of 125GB) .... very close to the SFS/0 limit.

Last edited by Framiga on 12-May-2012 at 02:16 PM.

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@sundown

Quote:

Yeah, buffer is like a file cache, you can add buffers to a partition in a shell to test copy speed & change it in MTB without re-formating. I use 600 on the boot partition & 1000 on the rest.

I see the Media toolbox default set up is 600 buffers. On my 7 year old Western Digital PATA HD I'm booting with now I've been using 1000 buffers on the 1 GB boot drive for ages. I don't recall what the other partitions on that HD have for buffers. I probably left them at 600. That drive has been working fine for over 7 years so far.

On this new WD HD it probably won't hurt to set all of the partitions at 1000 Buffers.

Quote:

If the volumes show on the WB, then you select each, one at a time, & format them. Sounds like the settings are right if they show.

Yes, but it is at this point that the problem starts.

- First partition (1GB boot) using Quick Format completes the format quickly.

- 2nd partition (40 GB) using Quick Format gives the 2 requesters asking if I am sure. After approving each the requester the format window just sits there without any action. I left it once for 20 minutes without any progress. Clicking on the "Stop" button accomplishes nothing. The cursor will move about, but cannot give any action upon anything else. It is almost as if the machine freezes.

- All remaining partitions do the same as the 2nd partition if I try to format them after rebooting to kill the format window.

I've been using my 7 year old main drive to boot up. I wonder if there is something wrong with the old boot partition preventing the formatting. I think I will try disconnecting the old drive and boot up with my OS4.1 CD to see if it will set up the new HD without problems. It will probably have the older slb_v2 version 1.8b which Toaks says to use.

Before I do that I'll try to set this HD up with the slb_v2 version 1.16 which my old boot partition is using now. I know people are saying v1.19 works fine for them, but I seem to be out of options.

_________________
Moxee
AmigaOne X1000
AmigaOne XE G4
I'd agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong.

@Rex

Quote:

I recently had problems with the hard drives in my A1 XE G3. I changed the battery, which fixed things for a day or so. Then I found if I plugged a different power lead into the drive it worked good as gold for about a month. When it started playing up again I replaced the PSU and now it just works fine all the time.

I installed a new battery when I first started having this format problem. The battery I removed tested as slightly above 2v. I didn't think 2v was good enough to even work. Once I had to go through a series of batteries within a few days before this A1 settled on one it liked.

I sure hope my power supply is not faulty. Where did you get your new one?

_________________
Moxee
AmigaOne X1000
AmigaOne XE G4
I'd agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong.

@Moxee

Quote:

I think I will try disconnecting the old drive and boot up with my OS4.1 CD to see if it will set up the new HD without problems.

this is indeed a good test.

You got a very weird problem there!

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@Framiga

Quote:

you can play with dosbuffers as you wish (for that large partitions i would rise them a bit).

The largest partition I have is 80 GB.

Quote:

The only 2 sensible settings are MaxTransfer and Mask. (must be identical on ALL your HDs)

Yes, they are. I never played around with them.

Quote:

If all the given suggestions won't works, i would start to think to a defective HD.

That is what I thought with the first HD I bought. I returned it 2 days ago and got an identical replacement. The only PATA left in town it seems. I'd hate to think that I managed to get two faulty HDs.

Quote:

Did you try to reduce the partitions size?

Yes, I've tried smaller and larger.

Quote:

If i got it right, you have a 250GB HD divided in 2 identical partitions (that's means a booting partition of 125GB) .... very close to the SFS/0 limit.

Oh no, nothing like that. It is a 320 GB Western Digital Caviar Blue PATA 7200 rpm.
- 1st partition 1 GB SFS0
- 2nd partition 40 GB SFS2
- 3rd partition 6 GB SFS2
- the rest of the drive is unused or will be a series of 80 GB SFS2 partitions to fill out the drive.

One thing I have not done on this HD yet is to make a SWAP partition because I will be using this HD to back up the partitions on my older main drive. It already has a SWAP partition.

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Moxee
AmigaOne X1000
AmigaOne XE G4
I'd agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong.

@thread

I booted with my Update 1 CD, but I have not made any changes yet because here is something I noticed on all of the partitions of my working older main HD:
- Maxtransfer: 7FFFFFFF

On all the partitions of the New HD made using Update 4:
- Maxtransfer: 1FE00

Is this difference a problem? Should I change the non-formatting partitions on the new HD to the Maxtransfer setting of the older working HD?

Mask is the same for both HDs:
- FFFFFFFE

_________________
Moxee
AmigaOne X1000
AmigaOne XE G4
I'd agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong.

@Moxee #52

I tried it both ways and it did not seem to matter where the HDs were located.
It doesn't matter because of the jumpers; unless your using an ATA adapter like the SII0680ide.

I am using 4.1 Update 4 on an original unfixed XE G4 machine.
Can you format the drive using a earlier version like Update2 ?

It is a Western Digital Caviar Blue 320 GB PATA drive.
I thought all drive sizes beyond 120 Gigabytes were dubious.

_________________

@Moxee

I just remebered that you can also use the CLI command "idetool" so see the status and set the speed when OS4 is already running. Try this first.

_________________
>Amiga Classic and OS4 developer for OnyxSoft.
>A1-XE/G4, Radeon9250, Sweex 5.1, SII680
-Don't hesitate to contact me about my programs, but please use e-mail instead of PM. E-mails are more likely to be read in time, and easier for me to keep track of.

@Moxee

I picked up a new Thermolake ?? PSU from one of the online stores for less than $100 - finding one with enough PATA power plugs was the thing.
Back in the days before OS4 when A1s only ran Linux, I used my new hard drive as an emergency backup for a PC for which it was formatted fat 32. When it went back in the A1 I was unable to reformat it for Linux. In the end I put it back in the PC and used Seagates free HD tool box to zero the drive.

@Snuffy

Quote:

I am using 4.1 Update 4 on an original unfixed XE G4 machine. Can you format the drive using a earlier version like Update2 ?

I tried that with my Update 1 and still no joy.

Quote:

It is a Western Digital Caviar Blue 320 GB PATA drive. I thought all drive sizes beyond 120 Gigabytes were dubious.

I've been using large HDs for quite some time. Maybe you are thinking of large partitions. I don't know. I've never made a partition larger than 40 GB on OS4 before.

_________________
Moxee
AmigaOne X1000
AmigaOne XE G4
I'd agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong.

@Deniil715

Quote:

I just remebered that you can also use the CLI command "idetool" so see the status and set the speed when OS4 is already running. Try this first.

I don't understand all those commands. Unless I can read some docs on the subject I'll probably make things worse.

_________________
Moxee
AmigaOne X1000
AmigaOne XE G4
I'd agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong.

@thread

I want to thank all the members who offered me assistance. I appreciate it.

This morning I gave up in frustration. This has taken more time that it is worth. I thought I would learn something in the process, but every road leads to a cliff.

So, I stuck one of my old SATA drives in and will use that for a backup drive. I'll use the new PATA drive for paper weight.

Unsolved, but thanks to all for your help.

_________________
Moxee
AmigaOne X1000
AmigaOne XE G4
I'd agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong.

@Moxee

Is this a 2-1/2 or 3-1/2 inch drive?

_________________
AmigaOne 500(update 6) / microA1(update 6) / Cubic IDE / Imagine
Amiga 4000/1200/500/2500/1000 / VIC20 / C64 / SX64 / C128 / C16 / C116 / Plus/4 / PET B500
Windows 7 / 3GHz AMD Phenom 8GB RAM / Lightwave / Visual C++

@thinkchip

3-1/2 inch.

_________________
Moxee
AmigaOne X1000
AmigaOne XE G4
I'd agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong.

@Moxee

don't give up!.

here's a few things..

1. try to make a partition on the first blocks of the hdd, make it less than 4GB, use SFS on it.

2. set buffer to around 1000 on it

3. remove all other partitions in mediatoolbox, make sure there's only 1 partition there.

4. boot up with the CD again and quick format the partition (if found), i have had this problem before with SFS and JXF on some hardrives and the above helped me.

i would personally advise that you never use partitions bigger than 30GB.
Keep in mind that buffer size use a shit load of memory so if you add 2000 buffers on every partition for 200 GB... well, i can safely say that most Amiga One users will not have enough memory for that in their machines.

The workaround i used was that i set the buffers as low as possible on harddrives that didnt matter all that much and left it big at partitions like T: , SYS: and work:.

i hope you will try these steps and let us know how it goes.

_________________
Brand new website... www.amigaguru.com

@Moxee

Is your new drive getting the same partition names as the old drive?
Like DH1, DH2, etc.

If so change the first letter. ND0, ND1.......

Be sure to hit enter to set the name in the list.

@Moxee

Quote:

I'll use the new PATA drive for paper weight.

So your new drive is a PATA drive, and you still didn't try lowering the UDMA speed??!

As I said, I got similar issues with my 160GB PATA disk as UDMA133. Have to set it to UDMA100 or lower to make it work.

Get drive info for all drives on sii0680.device. Maybe you have another controller:
idetool -l sii0680ide.device

Set drive on unit 0 to UDMA100:
idetool -x sii0680ide.device 0 69
(Edit: should be 69, not 'F'. 'F' is for U-Boot.)

http://www.titan.co.nz/amigaak/AA020874d.htm

Last edited by Deniil715 on 16-May-2012 at 02:26 PM.

_________________
>Amiga Classic and OS4 developer for OnyxSoft.
>A1-XE/G4, Radeon9250, Sweex 5.1, SII680
-Don't hesitate to contact me about my programs, but please use e-mail instead of PM. E-mails are more likely to be read in time, and easier for me to keep track of.

@Toaks

Thanks pal for your advice. I'll have to try this in a couple of days. I devoted all my time for 6-7 days on this problem that I got way behind in my chores outside and other obligations so I need to get back to work.

I'll report back when I can get to it.

_________________
Moxee
AmigaOne X1000
AmigaOne XE G4
I'd agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong.

@Mechanic

Quote:

Is your new drive getting the same partition names as the old drive? Like DH1, DH2, etc. If so change the first letter. ND0, ND1....... Be sure to hit enter to set the name in the list.

Well, yes they are (DH5, DH6, DH7, DH8), but the old back-up drive is removed. I didn't think that would be a problem. Is it?

Thanks about the hitting the enter. I've forgotten that on occasion then remembered.

_________________
Moxee
AmigaOne X1000
AmigaOne XE G4
I'd agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong.