CompuServe Thread

Mark, A possible guess is that the drive's format capacity hasn't been correctly set and the format program has extended beyond the last usable track on the drive. If you use a mountlist entry to mount the drive you might try changing the hicyl entry to a lower value. The other approach is if the drive is formatted using HDToolbox, use the toolbox to read the drive's parameters so you are sure to have the correct number of cylinders and sectors per track. Whan you try to high-level format the drive after it's automounted, the DOS format program gets the drives parameters off the RDB. If the values stored there aren't correct, and Format tries to format too many cylinders, that could cause the problem you are having. You can "test" this theory by low-level formatting only a few tracks by telling your HD format software that the drive only has 20 cylinders. Then after the low-level format try the high-level. If that works, then you know that the number of cylinders set for the drive were wrong before. You might also check the drive's manual to ccehck for the correct formatting parameters. Keep in mind that the manual numbers will probably not be correct for the Amiga and the total blocks you can actually allocate will be somewhat less than those indicated in the manual for the drive. A 245 meg Quantum drive will actually format out to around 234 meg (1024 x 1024) or something more than 245,000,000 bytes. This will translate into about 479,232 blocks of 512 bytes each. As long as the RDB parameters are set so that the number of cylinders x spt x heads doesn't exceed that number you should be OK. If that fails, then there may be a problem with the drive. It may have a bad sector. You may need to ask the format software to do whatever is needed to map out bad sectors.

Trying to help… Hi Mark, I am using Quantum drives too; reduce the number for the HIGH track for your drive a little bit with HDTools, or your preferred configuration- software, and try to format again. Some controllers can not low-level format Quantumdrives, and if you force it, you may damage it! The capacity is not for all drives of one model the same, it depends on the bad block testings in the factory. So the number of possible tracks can vary a bit, and if you reduce it a bit for yourself, you should be on the safe side. I found this phenomenon not only on Quantum drives; I am running here 3 drives, they were cheap sold as junk, and doing well- slightly reduced. ..and this is my first debut :> in this forum, so I would like to say hello to everyone. Amiga is busy for me since '86, doing it's job on graphic and design for videoproductions in the university's media-center very well! Hope I could help. Harry, cutting down expenses with AP – from Germany