hi all, i have got an a1200, it is a vanilla system, so what is needed to install a hard drive?

i have not yet unscrewed it, but is will anything more than a CF card & adapter needed, or does it need brackets/etc as well.

i do have some old laptop drives, one can be used, but then again will i need a cable?

ta
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If it is a standard A1200 that has never been opened then you should hopefully already have a 2.5" HDD mounting bracket and a 2.5" IDE cable. If not, the cable isn't hard to source, and you don't need the mounting bracket as you could just use some valcro to hold the drive in place.

You can indeed use old laptop 2.5" IDE drives. I used them in a few of my Amigas. 60GB and 40GB ones in 2 of my A1200's and a 6GB one in an A600. The thing to remember is that as standard the Amiga cannot use HDDs larger than 4GB total size, so even with a much larger HDD you would lose the rest of the space and only be able to use the first 4GB of the drive. This is caused by the standard Amiga FFS filesystem. To get around this problem we use another file system called SFS. Have a look in the classicamiga wiki for full details on how to use SFS to setup, partition and format a large HDD with SFS. Normally the most reliable method is to first partition the first part of the HDD with the standard FFS of about 500MB and installed Workbench onto it and get it working. Then partition the rest of the HDD with SFS to be able to read and use the rest of the drive to load your games and demos onto.

For CF cards, only buy Sandisk cards as they are the only really reliable one. I've had too many issues with Kingston cards and other makes are hit and miss too. You can get a 4GB Sandisk CF card for less than £10, and an IDE to CF card adapter for a couple of pounds on ebay from chinese sellers.

And to setup the harddrive/cf card it is easiest to actually use a PC and a copy of the emulator WinUAE. This allows direct access to Amiga HDDs connected to the PC, and you can setup a new HDD or CF card in the emulators. Just boot up Workbench in the emulator, with the HD/CF card connected and added to the emulators harddrive properties page. You can then use an Amiga partitioning program to directly set it up, and then copy Workbench on to it. Again look in the Classicamiga Wiki as some details are in there.
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I recommend getting the 4GB CF IDE hard drive package from AmigaKit. It is doesn't cost a lot and it provides you with everything you need.

You can find it here: http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/...roducts_id=883
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Yes I got one of the Amigakit hd set-up and I liked it, as all you have to do is chose which OS your going to install and it works great even if you want to re-install a different OS.
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thanks all.

not done much, checked my workbench and it doesnt have hdformat (or whatever the software is) and the manual implies that only HD 1200's had it on the floppy (seems an expensive thing, cheaper just to have it included i would have thought) but been going through my games on floppy, and not in a major rush now as most appear to work enough, but some favourites dont

and with xmas coming up funds are needing to be spent there.

I have finally reorganised my workspace (i work from home) and now have the 1200, an Xbox 1, an Xbox 360, my old (6+ years) pc and my work laptop all connected (well the XB1 and 1200 via a scart adapter that takes 2 secs to swap cables) to work straight away.

Also an unused slide out tray on the desk has been dremmeledat the back and the 1200 fits perfectly in the space with easy access to the floppy
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