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[johnser]

Hi,

Sorry for posting another question on hard disk installs, but I just have a qucik question.

I have an Amiga 600, Kickstart 2. & Workbenck 2.05 (install) disk, and I want to get my hard disk seen. I have installed a 500Mb laptop drive using the 2.5" IDE cable. This is as far as I have got.

I take it that I need to partition the new drive on the Amiga and format it to get it seen.

My question is where can i get an application to do this?

Many thanks in advance.

John

[dandelion]

You need to get hold of a HDToolbox disk. There are other 3rd party prep disks around as well.

When you load this application (from an autobooting floppy) it should recognise your drive. You might have to click on Change Drive Type (or similar) and then on the Read Drive Information from Disk (or similar) which will scan the drive to ascertain manufacturer, cylinders etc. Once this has been done go back to the main window which will allow you to partition to the drive (not too many on a low mem machine as each one takes up a bit of memory).

As it is an IDE drive don't Low Level Format (an option in HDToolBox) as this will potentially kill it. Format the disks by booting to workbench from floppy and then simply formatting them as if they were floppies (don't Quick Format unless it's been used on an Amiga before).

I think this should all work. As for where you'll find the relevant program..perhaps someone could email you the correct version for Workbench 2.x

[Jope]

Can you tell us what disks you have exactly? You said Workbench 2.05(install) but does this mean that you have the WB disk or the Install disk?

What's written on the label?

If it's the Install disk, do you also have the Workbench, Extras and Fonts disks?

[LP]

As far as I recall you should be able to see the HD as a NDOS disk on your system... I'm though not sure if WB2.05 is cabable of showing this...

But You'll only need the HDToolBox from Your workbench disks to do do the job... But You'll have to format (NOT LOWLEVEL FORMAT!) the disk first and then partion it afterwards... In many cases it's enough to do a quickformat on the drive...

Hope it helps.. And welcome to Amiga.org

[johnser]

Thanks for the updates guys.

I have only two WorkBench disks. One of the disks is the disk I use to boot to the workbench and also a Fonts disk.

I have the drive installed but it is not showing on the workbench screen. The drive I think is not formatted and probably doesnt even have a partition created yet.

I think I will have to keep a look out for a later version of WB maybe V2.10 as my Roms wont allow V3.1, and go from there.

Thanks for the welcome, great and friendly resource on this fantastic (but old) system.

John

[dandelion]

I installed a new HD in an Amiga just yesterday so it's quite fresh in my mind (however, this was with Workbench v. 3, but I imagine it is quite similar). If you have the 2.x install disk this is what I recommend you do...

a) Boot from the install disk. You probably won't see the drive icons at this stage for your new HD
b) Load up HDToolbox. You might have to dig for this program amongst other things like the Workbench installer, but it should be there.
c) It will probably display some information about a drive it has recognised on your system, but more likely than not the only thing it will let you do at this stage is Change Drive Type.
d) Click on this. You will now be presented with new options, you want the one which says Read Information from Disk or similar. This will quickly scan the disk and extract all the information HDToolbox needs to go on with partitioning and preparing the drive.
e) Great. You've done that. Click on OK or Save to take you back to the main menu.
f) Next partioning. If you don't want to bother with this step HDToolbox by default will give you two equally sized partitions (although on smaller disks it will just give you one). If you want to change this click on Partition Drive and use the sliders to alter the partition sizes. It's very easy. Just press Help if you get confused. And don't forget to name each partition something sensible like DH0, DH1 etc.
g) Once you've done that click Save Changes to Drive and close the program.
h) Wait ten seconds and then reset. When workbench reboots your partitions will be there, but they will be described as DH0:NDOS or DH1:e509 or similar gobbledegook. Just format them as per floppy disks (i.e click once, select Format from the pulldown menu).
i) Oh, and one other thing, if you want to boot from the HD which I expect you do then make sure you click bootable for one of the devices.
j) Now you can set about installing Workbench which you can do with the installer program on the same Install disk.
k) You should now be finished. Reboot and have fun.

[fx]

I think you're missing disks if that's all you've got :/

I'm not sure since I have never really used wb 2.05 but atleast wb2.1 is on more diskettes, I would guess you'll need workbench, extras, fonts (and maybe storage and locale?) .

and if things aren't changed completely in 2.05 hdtoolbox is on the install disk and not on workbench. and install I think only came with computers that had a HD.