A1200 Hard Drive Installation

I have not got any experience with an A4000, the only thing that I know for certain is that the A1200 and the A4000 have got the same chip set. However, I can explain how to set-up an IDE hard drive on an A1200. I don`t know how to make a SCSI drive the boot drive. I have always done this using Commodores HDToolBox To set up an IDE hard Drive:- 1) Boot up from the WORKBENCH3.0 INSTALLER floppy disk. 2) DC (double-click) on the installer disk icon 3) DC on the HDTools icon 4) DC on the HDToolBox 5) The HDToolBox program reads the Hard drive in system. IGNORE the fact that it says that the drives that you have installed are all SCSI, the Amiga thinks that ALL drives are SCSI drive, even though you know for a fact that they are IDE. 6) On the Hard Drives in System screen, select the drive that you want to change. 7) Select the PARTITION DRIVE button. You will then find yourself in the partition drive screen 8) If you need to re-partition the hard drive, whether to ADD or delete a partition, select the partion to delete by moving the mouse pointer over it and pressing the LEFT mouse key. 9) Then click on the DELETE PARTITION button. This will leave a gap on you hard-drive. 10) Move your mouse pointer onto the adjacent partition, press and hold the LEFT mouse key, and move the partition all the way to the left, as far as it will go. This only applies as long as it was not the very right hand partition that you deleted. 11) Underneath the partition that you have just moved you will see a little arrow head, move your mouse pointer over this, and move it all the way to the RIGHT, this then fills the gap that deleting the previous partition left behind. 12) If you need to ADD a partition, you need to make the one of the partitions that you have already got SMALLER. You do this in the same way that you filled in the gap previously. 13) Then you click the NEW PARTITION button. 14) Just under the NEWPARTITION button is the Partition Device Name text box, in there you can call the partition whatever you like within reason of course. 15) And just under that is the BOOTABLE button, if this is TICKED it means that the selected partition is BOOTABLE. To make it NON-BOOTABLE click on it with the left mouse key. 16) When you have got the hard-drive set-up to your satisfaction click `OK` 17) You arrive back at the Hard Drives in System screen, Click on the VERIFY DATA ON DRIVE button, Click CONTINUE on the requester. The next stage depends on HOW BIG your drive is, On my 1.2Gb drive it takes about 10 minutes. 18) Anyway, when this has completed OK, YOU HAVE REACHED THE POINT OF `NO` RETURN. When you click on the SAVE CHANGES TO DRIVE button, ALL of the info that IS on the drive, WILL be gone for good. If you are happy, click on the SAVE CHANGES TO DRIVE BUTTON. This takes less than a second. 19) The next stage is to go to your Workbench screen where you will see you IDE hard -drive with a name something like DH0:????, plus the same for every other partition that you have got on the hard-drive. 20) Now comes the FORMATTING of the partitions. Click on the partion you need to format to select it, the FORMAT requester pops up. 21) In this you can type in the NAME of the partition, if you want one that is. You don`t have to puyt TRASHCAN on the disk, so de-select it to REMOVE the tick, then click on the FAST FILE SYSTEM box to SELECT it. 22) Then click on the FORMAT button. A warning requester will pop up, click on format again, then sit and wait until it has finished. 23) Repeat from number (19) for each partition. That is how I set up a hard drive for my A1200. This works for either a 2.5in drive or a 3.5in hard drive.

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