Short: Check if your HD setup is 4GB-ready Author: thomas-rapp@web.de (Thomas Rapp) Uploader: thomas-rapp@web.de (Thomas Rapp) Type: disk/misc Introduction ============ Amiga Computers with Kickstart 3.1 and below cannot handle hard drives greater than 4GB. Although there are many solutions and even OS3.5+ claim to be compatible with large hard drives, it is sometimes difficult to be sure. Here are two programs that can test the driver compatibility. Background ========== The standard interface between a device driver (e.g. scsi.device) and a file system (e.g. FastFileSystem) addresses blocks on a drive by a 32 bit address. With 32 bits you can address 2^32 bytes = 4GB. There are three solutions to expand this border: - TD64 is a 64 bit command set invented by Phase5. - NSD is a new style to communicate with a device driver. It also adds 64 bit commands similar to TD64. - Direct-SCSI is a method to send raw device commands directly to the SCSI bus. Most IDE drivers understand and emulate these commands, too. To bypass the 4GB border you need a device driver and a file system that both support the same command set out of the above. 1. Check4GB =========== This is a simple program that checks which command set a device driver supports. Usage: check4gb Example: check4gb scsi.device 0 Parameters: device The name of the device driver of your hard drive unit The unit number (or SCSI id) of your hard drive Output: xxx.device unit y supports NSD commands xxx.device unit y supports TD64 commands xxx.device unit y supports SCSI-Direct commands xxx.device unit y does not support harddisks larger than 4GB Self explaning, I hope cannot open xxx.device unit y The device/unit combination you specified is invalid. 2. CheckHD ========== This program checks every partition that is mounted in the system if it resides above the 4GB border or overlaps it, and if yes, compares the command sets available with those supported by the file system used. Usage: checkhd [config file] Example: checkhd Parameters: config file Optional. The name of a file containing informations about the different file systems. Default is checkhd.filesys. It is searched in the current directory, in the program directory and in S:. Output: A list of all partitions found along with the informations inquired. The last column is the most important: it reads either "ok" or "***". If it is ***, this partition must not be used ! After the *** the command sets supported by the device driver are listed. Configuration: It is not possible to test which command set a file system uses. Because of this, CheckHD needs a configuration file that lists the file systems along with the supported command sets. Every file system not listed in the configuration file is considered to not support any of the new command sets. The config file looks as follows: One line for each file system. filesystem the first three characters of the DosType. E.g. if the DosType is 444f5303 (DOS\3) the filesystem column is DOS. version the lowest version that supports the listed command sets. If the same file system is listed multiple times with different version numbers, the higher versions must apear before the lower ones. command set Up to three command sets this file system supports. Options are one of TD64, NSD and SCSI. comment Everything after the third command set is ignored. The example checkhd.filesys contains all modern file systems that I know. WARNING ======= These programs were only tested on my machine with my harddisks. There is no guarantee that they run on others. I am not responsible for any damage. Use them on your own risk.