Classicamiga Forum Retro Edition
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Thread: Vanishing hard drives
Amiga_Always 14:31 12th November 2011
Here's a puzzler for you!

I recently revived my old a1200 and powered it up to find the hard drive made some very odd noises and refused to boot. I changed the drive for a cf adapter I had with 4gb card, booted from floppy, partitioned the drive fine, rebooted and no partitions came up to format. Tried this 3 times, then tried a real hard drive, same thing. I've changed the cable and power supply in desparation with no joy.

Any ideas anyone?
[Reply]
Phantom 14:38 12th November 2011
Ensure that your hard drive is being recognised by the A1200 at the Early Startup-Mouse (by holding both mouse buttons at startup). Also what program do you use? I suppose the original HDToolBox what came with Workbench? Does this recognises your hard drive?
[Reply]
Amiga_Always 14:59 12th November 2011
No sign of it in Early Startup, yet HD Toolbox sees it no problem. I have set up tons of drives in the past so I'm pretty sure it's not me. Are thrre any other partitioning tools you recommend?
[Reply]
Phantom 15:03 12th November 2011
Try HDInstTools from Aminet. Easy to acquire. I never had problems with HDToolBox, as it's my prefered method instead of HDInstTools (while it seems and feels better allowing big partitions, actually it's not as it seems), but try with that if you have success.
[Reply]
Amiga_Always 22:36 12th November 2011
Solved it! My CD drive was causing the problem, as soon as I disconnect it I can boot to the hard drive no problems, just need to get another CD drive now! Thanks for the suggestions, it's good to know there is someone out there!
[Reply]
Harrison 18:01 13th November 2011
Was the cd drive also on the same internal idea port? if so, the port can only run one device unless you add a buffered ide interface, and even with that you need to use the software idefix before you can use the HDD and cd together.
[Reply]
Amiga_Always 20:11 13th November 2011
Ide ports have 2 channels, master and slave, so can run either 2 hard drives or 1 hd and 1 cd on the same cable as long as it's a reasonably short one!

I've been playing around with the cables a little more and got both to work together again, only strange thing is the hard drive (master) is on the slave plug on the cable and vice versa, it won't work at all the other way round, wierd but true!
[Reply]
Harrison 15:41 14th November 2011
Not in the A1200 and A600 they don't. The A1200's internal IDE port is a single channel unbuffered IDE interface and will only directly support 1 drive/device as a master and does not support a slave drive. Commodore only ever intended this port to be used for a single internal 2.5" IDE HDD, so cut costs by doing this. You need to use a buffered IDE interface connected to this port to reliably use more than one drive at a time. You can buy one from Amigakit for about £11.
[Reply]
Amiga_Always 16:04 14th November 2011
I'm not going to argue with you over this, me being new and all, but I currently have a 40Gb HDD and CD-RW running from the internal port of an A1200 Rev1B using a 44pin to 2 x 40pin cable with no problems. What you are saying could well be correct under OS 3.0, but not for 3.9 which I am now running!
[Reply]
Phantom 16:59 14th November 2011
Originally Posted by Amiga_Always:
I'm not going to argue with you over this, me being new and all, but I currently have a 40Gb HDD and CD-RW running from the internal port of an A1200 Rev1B using a 44pin to 2 x 40pin cable with no problems. What you are saying could well be correct under OS 3.0, but not for 3.9 which I am now running!
I understand you, as I used to use my A1200 with exactly the same cable 10 years ago, using the A1200 internal IDE, so I had my 3.5" HD together with a CD-ROM back then working without any problems AND I was running AmigaOS 3.0!!! Of course to take it into account I had to use a program (I don't recall its name now).
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