OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical > Storage

Using a 1 TB USB hard drive

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Doug Bissett:
What has worked, for me, more than once is:

- Move anything that is on the disk to another location, if you want to keep it.
- Use DFSEE to wipe the beginning of the disk, then close DFSEE.
- Eject the drive (reboot to get it unmounted, if necessary, but I never had to do that).
- Mount the drive again.
- Use (mini)LVM, or DFSEE,  to add the partition(s) and LVM drive letter(s). I have always used logical volumes, so that windows doesn't get confused. Note that the USB widget gets royally confused if the drive letter changes. Just ignore that (but it can be pretty stubborn).
- Close (mini)LVM, or DFSEE, while saving whatever it did.
- Format the partition(s). I have one disk where it is all JFS, and my other one has about 300 GB for windows, formatted NTFS by windows, and the rest formatted as JFS. Just be sure that windows (or anything else, other than (mini)LVM or DFSEE), never tries to create new partitions, or you will need to start over.

One tip: I suggest that you do NOT try a long format, especially on a USB disk. I have yet to see any need for that with JFS, or NTFS. I did try it when I first got the 1TB USB disk, just to see how long it took. I seem to recall that it was about 2 days. If you ever need to do a long format, it would be worth the time to remove the disk from the enclosure, attach it to an IDE, or SATA, controller, do the format (which will still take a LONG time), and put it back into the enclosure.

I haven't, yet, tried to make a large disk bootable. I do have a 640 GB disk that I intend to try, one of these days.

Pete:
Hi Neil

No idea why my "using1Tb checklist" did not work for you. It has worked fine with 2 * 1Tb drives here to date - and I see Doug uses the same technique.

Maybe something to do with CHS...


Regards

Pete

Doug Bissett:
Sorry, this one dropped off the radar, but it should be cleared up.


--- Quote ---The OS2DASD.DMD /D:0 /BOOTABLE /D:1 /FULLSIZE allowed DFSee to change the geometry.
--- End quote ---

Odd. HELP OS2DASD.DMD states that OS2DASD.DMD has no parameters. Your parameters are probably ignored.


--- Quote ---I ejected the drive (but that failed
--- End quote ---

How did you eject it? Did you change the drive letter? Did you depend on the badly broken USB widget for that information? Even the "fixed" widget, that I got, is still badly broken if the drive letter changes.

You need to use the eject command, and ignore whatever the USB widget might think (you may even need to reboot - with the device disconnected - to get it smartened up).

The main trick is to clear the front end of the drive, using DFSEE. Then the tools (DFSEE or (mini)LVM) can create a proper configuration. Once the disk is configured properly, you need to create all of the partitions, using (mini)LVM or DFSEE. Nothing else will do it right. Then, if you use windows to format part of it as NTFS or FAT32, you need to be sure that it does not "take over the world", and create new partitions, or you are back where you started.

Then, you need to remember that OS/2 stores the LVM information with the partition, while windows stores drive letters etc in the registry (and they tend to change, for no known reason, every once in a while). The windows approach can be very confusing, if you use multiple portable devices, and it will always offer to format partitions that it doesn't understand (HPFS, JFS), so you need to pay attention when replying to the popup.

Hopefully, this clears up some of the confusion...

Ian Manners:
Hi Doug,

This is cleared up :)

OS2DASD.DMD has always taken parameters, simply not always documented.

I am however certain that /FULLSIZE and /BOOTABLE were publically documented somewere, maybe in Dani's readme for her DaniS506.ADD ?

/FULLSIZE should be the default for Disk 1 and onwards but I noted that this did need to be stipulated for a Western Digital 1TB HD I formatted from new, for the full capacity to be seen a few years ago.

added:-
there is a note in the IDEDASD package about options you have to apply to OS2DASD.DMD for harddisks greater than 512GB in size.

Doug Bissett:

--- Quote from: Ian Manners on February 05, 2014, 06:12:01 pm ---Hi Doug,

This is cleared up :)

OS2DASD.DMD has always taken parameters, simply not always documented.

I am however certain that /FULLSIZE and /BOOTABLE were publically documented somewere, maybe in Dani's readme for her DaniS506.ADD ?

/FULLSIZE should be the default for Disk 1 and onwards but I noted that this did need to be stipulated for a Western Digital 1TB HD I formatted from new, for the full capacity to be seen a few years ago.

added:-
there is a note in the IDEDASD package about options you have to apply to OS2DASD.DMD for harddisks greater than 512GB in size.


--- End quote ---

I don't know about "cleared up". If anything it is more puzzling.

My first 1 TB drive is a Samsung Story Station USB drive (it is a SATA drive, in the case). When I got it (a few years ago), all I did was use DFSEE to clear the front end of the drive, then make two partitions. One was formatted, with windows, as NTFS. The other was formatted by eCS (probably an early 2.0 version) as JFS. It was never any problem. I even changed the partition sizes, at one point (probably using DFSEE), and reformatted it, still no problem (other than USB 2.0 is slower than the second coming).   :-\

My second 1 TB drive, is a Seagate drive, that I put into my old Asus A8N-SLI machine. I got that not long before Christmas. I replaced a 640 GB drive, used DFSEE to clear the front end, created a single partition, and formatted it JFS, with eCS 2.1. No troubles.

Okay, the first is a USB drive, so I would assume that IDEDASD, Dani, or AHCI, would have nothing to do with it. The second is a SATA drive, but the machine does not support AHCI, so it uses the Dani drivers.

After all of that, I don't know where OS2DASD.DMD comes into the picture. I know that OS2LVM,DMD sorts out the drive letters. OS2SCSI.DMD also gets into the act. AFAIK, all that does is create a software SCSI interface to the drives (possibly only the CD/DVD drives). Then, there is OS2CDROM.DMD, that supports CD/DVD drives (one parameter /Q to keep it from complaining if the drive is turned off). I would hope that any parameters, on any of the ones that say there are no parameters, would default to something that would always work. Whether they actually use any given parameters, or not, depends on how lazy the programmer was when (s)he created the version in use.

The bottom line is, that we don't know (without disassembling the software), for sure, if parameters do anything, or not. I can't see any reason why WD drives would work any different than Seagate drives. Of course, you may have been using an older version of OS2DASD.DMD, that did need parameters, when you first tried it. Whether the parameters are still needed, or not, would require that you start over, which I would assume you don't want to do.  ;D

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