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Author Topic: A little advice on IDE compactflash formatting  (Read 1535 times)

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Offline TheGooseTopic starter

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A little advice on IDE compactflash formatting
« on: April 16, 2008, 01:08:13 AM »
I got some Scandisk CFs and they are recognized but not to the full capacity. I'm using an A1200 with 3.1 install floppy, using HDtoolBox.

The CF I hope to put back in my A1000 after formatting. The one I'm dealing with now is a 256MB CF that only is seen as 163MB.

I looked for another post but could not find it.

Thanks for any pointers



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Offline Marcb

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Re: A little advice on IDE compactflash formatting
« Reply #1 on: April 16, 2008, 01:51:38 AM »
Not sure if this will help you or not but the way I approached it was to use Winuae to partition it and format the partitions then installed it onto the 1200 and it recognises the full 4gb.

(make sure you launch Winuae
with : "-disableharddrivesafetycheck" option!)

Good Luck,
Marcb
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Offline Amigoat

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Re: A little advice on IDE compactflash formatting
« Reply #2 on: April 16, 2008, 03:45:12 AM »
I had a similar problem with a 4 gig CF in my A1200. I had first tried a borrowed 512 meg unit and it formatted to full capacity with HDToolBox. Then later when I had the 4 gig unit I tried again but only got 512 mb.

I then made a a new copy of my original 3.1 install disk and got 4 gigs without any problem.

Was something being carried over from the installation of the smaller card?
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Offline rkauer

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Re: A little advice on IDE compactflash formatting
« Reply #3 on: April 16, 2008, 04:05:50 AM »
 Or look at this thread here in A.org...
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Offline TheGooseTopic starter

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Re: A little advice on IDE compactflash formatting
« Reply #4 on: April 16, 2008, 02:02:51 PM »
Ah sweet success. I forgot something, not the Amiga wiz I use to be. I needed to goto HDToolBox, and as the CF is listed as 'Uknown' click 'Change Drive Type' and then hit the 'Read Configuration' button. Duh.

Ok, then it read all the bits the right way, 'Save Changes' and then you are off to partition it. Although, in my case I had to make the 3.1 Install disk write-able, to save the changes, and didn't like doing that. But Read Configuration worked great.

Other notes, I got the CF understood on my ADIDE board too. There, I needed to boot useing the ADIDE software disk, and from shell run the 'ideconfig' command 1st! It understood everything. Then move onto the 'ICD Formatter' program. Disappoint though, I'm still wondering if ADIDE interface understands both master / slave channels ? Anyone know about that?

REMINDER PIC:











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Offline cv643d

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Re: A little advice on IDE compactflash formatting
« Reply #5 on: April 16, 2008, 05:36:57 PM »
Dont forget to set maxtransfer to the right number.

Before I knew about that I got all kind of weird errors in programs!
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Offline Xamiche

Re: A little advice on IDE compactflash formatting
« Reply #6 on: April 24, 2008, 02:38:53 PM »
I thought I'd tack my question onto the back of this thread, rather than creating a new one for this little question. I'm currently formatting a 5GB CF Micro Drive in my Amiga 600HD. The thing is, it's taken the better part of the last 3 hours to format half of a 1GB partition. This seems pretty slow to me. Is this a normal speed? Are CF MicroDrives slower than 2.5" HDs?
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Offline amiga1260

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Re: A little advice on IDE compactflash formatting
« Reply #7 on: April 24, 2008, 02:51:56 PM »
A CF card is slower than a HD. I use SYSINFO 3.24 to benchmark the speed with my Kingston CF Card and a 170 MB 2.5 " HD from Seagate.

The HD has a benchmark of 620 kb/s and my Compact flash 524 Kb/s.

SysInfo is not the best bench mark program to test the speed of your Hard drive.

You could better format you Micro drive with fast format or try it format on a PC with Winuae.
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Offline Xamiche

Re: A little advice on IDE compactflash formatting
« Reply #8 on: April 24, 2008, 03:02:05 PM »
Quote

amiga1260 wrote:
A CF card is slower than a HD. I use SYSINFO 3.24 to benchmark the speed with my Kingston CF Card and a 170 MB 2.5 " HD from Seagate.

The HD has a benchmark of 620 kb/s and my Compact flash 524 Kb/s.

SysInfo is not the best bench mark program to test the speed of your Hard drive.

You could better format you Micro drive with fast format or try it format on a PC with Winuae.

I tried the PC with WinUAE thing. It seemed to work, but when I transferred the drive to a real Amiga it was as though the drive where completely empty. I think for fast format to work there needs to be a current file system intact. The the Amiga didn't even recognise the partitions I had create with WinUAE. I think it might just be a matter of trial and error with a few tweaks. One thing to note, the card is not Flash RAM. It's actually a microdrive, which is a mini hard disk. I was certain it would be slower, but not as slow as it is running now. It's taken 3 hours to format 500MB. That just doesn't seem right.
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Offline TheGooseTopic starter

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Re: A little advice on IDE compactflash formatting
« Reply #9 on: April 24, 2008, 03:06:35 PM »
About formatting, I just chose the 'quick format' check box option and I was done.

These big capacity drives; I had to move on too, and trust the 'quick format' option.

BTW, my little CF drive has been working great.


 :-)
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Offline Marcb

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Re: A little advice on IDE compactflash formatting
« Reply #10 on: April 24, 2008, 03:49:30 PM »
@ Xamiche

The CF I'm using in the 1200 formatted quickly , I bought another, partitioned it exactly the same but 2 hours later only 33% through formatting the 1st 1gb partition I cancelled out.

Both 4gb, same brand, it's driving me nuts!

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Offline Xamiche

Re: A little advice on IDE compactflash formatting
« Reply #11 on: April 24, 2008, 03:54:50 PM »
I think the problem is my Amiga is not seeing the CF card as a HD, but as a giant FD. I've put the CF card back in my PC and am trying to format it there with WinUAE again. I'm not sure why it didn't work last time, but hopefully I can find the right set up to make it work this time.

Edit:
Seems to have worked this time around. Formatting the CF drive in WinUAE is a good deal faster than on my real Amiga and I can load it up with what ever software I need then transfer it to the real thing. Can't think why it didn't work last time. I haven't done anything different.  :-?

Edit 2:
Gah! Gremlins. The partition keeps falling off. I'll format the disk, install WB and all seems fine, but then I'll reboot WinUAE and the partition just disappears. Not always on the first reboot, but after a couple. It's like something is nuking the partition without me knowing about. Probably Windows is doing something I can't see that kills the partition. I think I'm going to have to format, install and GTFO before Windows rains on the picnic.  :evil:
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