Technical information
© Jean Louis-Guérin – V1.2a – September 2014 Page 12 / 69
The following table shows the minimum logical sector size required for specific partition sizes:
Partition Size
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Logical Sector Size
Up to 32MB
512
32MB – 64MB
1024
64 MB – 128MB
2048
128 MB – 256MB
4096
256MB – 512MB
8192
512MB – 2GB
7
32768
During partitioning you only need to specify the size of the partitions you want to create and the driver
will compute for you the optimum logical sector size. However it is possible in some cases to modify
this size during the “initialize” command. In that case you have to make sure that you specify a value
superior or equal to the minimum value presented in the table above.
2.4.2 Creating DOS partitions
Some hard disk drivers support creating DOS/FAT partitions. However it is usually easier and safer to
create the DOS partitions directly on a PC. This is covered in Creating FAT Partitions on a PC.
2.4.3 Creating TOS&DOS partitions
TOS&DOS partitions can only be created by PPDRIVER and HDDRIVER packages. Only use
TOS&DOS partitions with the matching driver (as they are not compatible) and never use them with
any other driver (see § 2.3 for important warning).
2.4.4 Creating Bootable Partitions
Most probably you also want to define at least one bootable partition on a drive so that the Atari can
be started from the hard disk without a diskette. The procedure to render a partition bootable is
described, for each reviewed hard disk driver, in the next chapter. For detailed information look at TOS
Boot Sequence in Part II of this document.
2.4.5 Installing Disk Partitions on the Atari Desktop
After a drive has been partitioned you need to add a drive icon on the Atari desktop for each of the
partitions. Without these drive icons, the partitions will not be accessible from the desktop.
The procedure is the following:
On the Atari desktop, click on the icon associated with the floppy disk A and choose Install Disk
Drive... from the Options drop-down menu.
Change the drive identifier letter to “C” for example and the Icon label name to whatever
name to you want to see on the Atari desktop for this partition.
Click on Install, then move the new icon to the position you want it on the Atari desktop.
Repeat this procedure for each of the partitions on the drive(s), incrementing the Drive
Identifier letter each time.
Make sure you use capital letter (for example C) for the drive identifier. Otherwise the system will
think you are specifying a cartridge and the hard drive partition will not be accessible.
Once you have added drive icons for all the partitions of all the hard disk drives, you can save
the desktop by selecting Save Desktop command from the Options menu. This will write the
DESKTOP.INF file on the boot drive. This file is used, when the computer is booted, to retrieve
the defined environment (including disk drive icons).
6
Partition size is given for TOS ≥ 1.04. Prior to this version the maximum partition size should be divided by 2
7
Only supported in TOS 4.0. Officially only sector size of 16384 is supported (maximum size 1GB)