Iyonix hard drive size

What is the largest hard drive that I can fit into my v5.28 Iyonix?

Its present IDE drives are getting a little long in the tooth and
I was thinking of getting one of those SATA/IDE bidirectional thingies
and fitting a SATA hard drive to the Iyonix.

Chances?

Regards.

A 256GB drive should work, but performance will suffer (this is an Iyonix disc controller limitation, not anything to do with SATA conversion).

For best performance, limit yourself to 128GB.

A 256GB drive should work, but performance will suffer (this is an Iyonix disc controller limitation, not anything to do with SATA conversion).

To clarify: you can downformat any larger drive to 128 GiB and it stays fast – the limitation is that UDMA support of the ALi southbridge is limited to the first 128 GiB of any drive.

So overall, you can have a maximum 512 GiB of fast harddisc space in your IYONIX. Until someone ports ADFS 4 along with a driver for one of the PCI S-ATA cards…

@ Stuart & Steffen,

Thanks both. I had forgotten the UDMA limit, seems such a waste to
downformat a 500GB hard drive.(Any smaller and they tend to be
reformatted old drives as far as I can see.)

As I don’t use my Iyonix now and am only switching it on for
maintenance purposes. I could either wait for Jon Abbot to complete
his partitioning project or purchase three* SATA hard drives and downformat
them. Food for thought.

*One to run, one for back up and one spare.

Regards.

Partitioning won’t help you, given it’s a hardware limitation before software handles the partitions. However you could fit a 120GB SATA SSD in an adapter, which would have faster response times even if the UDMA won’t go any faster.

Has anyone tried a hard-disk that Fat32fs could read in a Iyonix?

Partitioning won’t help you, given it’s a hardware limitation before software handles the partitions. However you could fit a 120GB SATA SSD in an adapter, which would have faster response times even if the UDMA won’t go any faster.

I was about to say that, but you can format the drive down to 128GB to use as a fast RISC OS boot drive, and then create a partition for the rest of the disc, to use for data which you don’t mind a lot slower access to.

@ Theo & David,

I think that SSD is the way to go. Thanks.

Regards.

I can add a warning to Partition Manager with the offer to cap below the limit. I assume the cut-over point is LBA 268,435,455?

I assume the cut-over point is LBA 268,435,455?

I have no idea how UDMA technically works via the PCI-attached ALi Southbridge…but is this 128 GiB limit dependant on the sector size? I would guess “no”, but can someone explain? I mean, those 128 GiB cannot be presented as a memory-mapped “direct access” I/O area to a 32 bit processor.

And is in “classic IDE” a 4K sector size even possible? And would it survive an IDE-SATA adapter?

As far as I can tell it’s an LBA address limit and not a DMA restriction as its uses a 28bit LBA address on that revision of IDE.

As far as I can tell it’s an LBA address limit and not a DMA restriction as its uses a 28bit LBA address on that revision of IDE.

128 GiB is indeed the LBA28 address limit, but RISC OS has no problem adressing the drive beyond the 128 GiB limit, so the IYONIX ADFS must already have support for LBA48.

A bit of googling leads to pages that pretend that the ALi southbridge, when encountering a 48bit LBA, drops back to PIO mode. Completely transparently for the caller. Which definitiely makes sense, as it matches the IYONIX experience: first 128 GiB is fast, everything beyond is slow.

That’s how JB described it to me.

A bit of googling leads to pages that pretend that the ALi southbridge

Do you have a link as I couldn’t find the low-level Aladdin M1535+ spec. I got my info from the ATA-5 spec, which has a 28bit LBA (3×8bit LBA registers, plus 4bits in another). How you access more of the disc I’m unsure, CHS mode possibly as that has a 16bit sector register?

EDIT: The source implies PIO can address 32bit.

Thanks all,

The various bits have arrived and there is a SSD now acting as ADFS:4

For those who have any interest in my little project. I bought two Kingston
120GB SSD’s, well that’s what it said on the package., a 3.5inch to 2.5 inch case, and
a ‘StarTech 40pin to SATA converter’.

Still got to transfer more files over from my back up but so far looking good.

One further question if I may? What is the largest Fat32 disc that I can use
as a file back up?

Regards.

Fat32FS supports drives larger than 256 GiB (Filecore’s limit on 512 bytes/sector drives) by faking multiple partitions via SCSIFS, so the answer is probably 1 TiB or 2 TiB. You’d have to ask Jeff for the details though, I never tried it in practice.

The limit for media size on Fat32fs is 2TB if the drive is being accessed via SCSIFS (as that has the partition call). For other filing systems it’s 256GiB.

Can a plugged in fat32 Hard drive work in a Iyonix?

Yes, as long at it is plugged in via a powered hub. The built in sockets don’t seem to work very well.

Hmm – one of the small USB HDs in a plastic box seem to Ok here with a Iyonix

- little bit easier to find than the USB thumb/key cards.

I was thinking more about using 1 of the internal HDs sockets.

Yes, as long at it is plugged in via a powered hub. The built in sockets don’t seem to work very well.

The Iyonix originally came with USB1 only if you recall.
USB2 was an update.

That gives you a marker for the maturity of USB2 when the hardware was built. More – I don’t think the onboard ports didn’t do USB2 but the 2 on the card did.

I think it says more about the state of development of the RISC OS software in 2003. The USB2 PCI card used in the Iyonix was mature if not long in the tooth at the time of its release.

The front and back ports all come from the same card, so are all USB 2.

More – I don’t think the onboard ports didn’t do USB2 but the 2 on the card did.

Castle had problems getting the southbridge-based USB ports working, but they were USB 1.1 anyway. There were never USB drivers available for RISC OS for the southridge. You might remember the Omega’s USB failure.

But I guess you could use the motherboard USB ports for power supply, operating a fan or a lamp :-)

The USB PCI card was USB2.0 from the beginning (with a very widely used NEC chipset), because in 2002 it would have been REALLY difficult to source a PCI card that was USB 1.1 only! So it was, as David wrote correctly, “just” a software problem from the beginning. The Castle USB stack started on the USB podule a good bit earlier of course, so was USB 1.1 at heart.

Yes, as long at it is plugged in via a powered hub. The built in sockets don’t seem to work very well.

As a side note, there is a way to add internal powered USB ports to the Iyonix via a very simple mod and using the NZXT internal USB. That also adds a couple of internal powered slots for USB based storage to store a backup.

I have in my queue of stuff to publish for RISC OS on my blog an article on how to do the mod and add also extra powered USB ports, works very well and the mod is very simple (no soldering required), just need to bend a pin on the USB card which btw is not even wired, however best to show some picture. If anyone is interested I can try to complete the article.

@Paolo,
More ideas to think about. Now for some more questions.
Is USB2 Speed faster than the slow Iyonix PIO?

If I install a 2.5 inch SATA removable hard drive carrier and fit a SATA to IDE converter to it, will the Iyonix recognise the fat32 formatted disc?

Or do I modify the SATA tray to accept a SATA SSD and use some more 120GB SSD,s formatted for RO?

regards Ron.