Risc PC and Hard drive size

Hi

With RISC OS 5 ROMs, what is the maximum hard drive size for a Risc PC?

(I have a 160GB drive, already formatted in an Iyonix). Assuming there are no hardware issues, should it work?

thanks

I mean also 256GB.

As I understand the situation, RO 4.x and lower can only use 128GB (on a Risc PC?)

The Iyonix has a similar limit, but it is access speed. It can access only the first 128GB with high transfer rates (UDMA), the rest has to be accessed by PIO (like a Risc PC)

RO 5 Filecore supports 256GB (Although possibly more with 5.2)

I had two 250GB drives to my RISC PC. But I had a ADPL_IDE_Blitz card.

Is the 128GB limit on the RPC hardware (motherboard) or software?

With the Iyonix it seems a 256GB limit -but with reduced through-put – when it’s over 128GB – due to a hardware problem.

Has anyone tried any of the Podule cards or a PCI card to access Harddiscs – in a Iyonix?

With RO 5.21/new Filecore – is the 256GB limit lifted or does the ADFS modules need updating?

Is the software in the ADPL cards all the same – or different in each card?

With the Blitz card – is it possible to have two partitions of 250GB on a 500GB drive?
- or even have one partition of 500GB -with RO5.21 – since it doesn’t use the ADFS module?

As I understand it. 256GB is the limit prior to the bounty which has been claimed. One of the aims of the bounty was to allow different sector sizes which would allow 2TB support. Whether a new formatter has been made available, I don’t know.

Iyonix … due to a hardware problem.

I think it is a limitation, rather than a fault.

The problem was with the PCI – a hardware issue where larger drives would create an error if DMA for drives formatted to larger than 128Mbyte was not suppressed.

AIUI it is a bit more subtle than that. The first 120GB of a drive larger than 120GB can be accessed at the faster speed the rest of the drive at the slower speed. The big problem being that there was no control if files are saved to the ‘fast’ area or the ‘slow’ area. Speed was considered more important than capacity so it is recommended to limit drives to 120GB.

This is where partitioning would be useful. You could have a full speed partition and a slow partition.

What a good idea! I hate things to be wasted!

I hope the new partitioning utility makes it easy to prevent partitions spanning the boundary.

(I wonder if there are potential issues if the access mode changes while accessing a file that spans the boundary.)