#Quantum lowlevel format?
16 messages in this thread
HOW can I lowlevel format a Quantum Lightning 730S hard disk on my Amiga with
an Evolution (by MacroSystem) host adaptor??? I tried using the EvoInstall
tool, the format utility that comes with it, SCSIed and SCSIutil which I dl'd
here. All of the named programs 'hang' as soon as they try to access the drive.
At work we have (amongst others) a PC with an Adaptec 1542 SCSI host adaptor
which (rather: Adaptec's format utility) performs a lowlevel format of this
disk (I took it there on friday) without a problem in just over 4 minutes. So
the information I originally got here that Quantum hard disks can't be lowlevel
formatted clearly is wrong! But how can I do it on the Amiga?
Thanks!
// Christian "ELP" Busse
\X/ near Frankfurt, Germany
Christian: Have you tried the Amiga's HDToolBox, or GVP's ExpertPrep to try and
format your drive? Most of these tools allows you to specify the SCSI driver
name either as a ToolType or on the command line. For example, in HDToolBox you
can add a tooltype for the icon to read:
SCSI_DEVICE_NAME=warpdrive.device (or the name of your device driver)
You can add a Tooltype to ExpertPrep that reads:
scsidriver=warpdrive.device (or the name of your device driver)
I believe HDToolBox came with AmigaDOS 2.04 and above, and ExpertPrep can
probably be downloaded from the GVP support section in AmigaVendor.
// John (Warp 4040 & Emplant Quadra 840)
\X/ Mercury@ins.infonet.net
Hello,
HDToolBox is a bad example, as it will NOT lowlevel format the drive.
Christian might look at HDInstTools (available in this library) which does.
Oliver
"HDToolBox is a bad example, as it will NOT lowlevel format the drive."
It wont? Gee, I wonder what that button labeled "Low Level Format Drive" is for
then? You suppose someone at CBM put it there to fool the rest of us <g>. I
used it to Low-Level format my Toshiba MK535B drive. I guess the only reason it
took 15-minutes to come back and say it was ready was because CBM put in a
timing loop. Gee, those guys are such pranksters <g>.
Are you saying that HDToolBox low level formatting is bogus, or that the
Quantum drives require a special type of low level formatting?
// John (Warp 4040 & Emplant Quadra 840)
\X/ Mercury@ins.infonet.net
John,
The issue is not the model of the HD. It's the SCSI card that you're using. I
know that you must "format" HDs used on GVP cards/accelerators with GVP's own
software. I'm not sure about "low level format".
Bill
Well I don't see where it is a absolute requirement that I would have to use
GVP's HD formatting software to low level format/prep the drive. As long as the
software I used allowed me to specify the driver, and didn't use some special
RDB standard (conformed to CBM's RDB standard), then it should work the same,
right? And I always thought that a low level format was a function of the drive
itself. All the software did was send the command through the controller to the
drive to initiate a low level format. Am I way off base on this?
// John (Warp 4040 & Emplant Quadra 840)
\X/ Mercury@ins.infonet.net
>> All the software did was send the command through the controller to the
>> drive to initiate a low level format.
John,
yes, that's right, it should send a `FORMAT UNIT' (opcode = $04) SCSI command
to the drive.
But, for Quantum drives, there are 8 different options:
1) Format with absolutely no defects
2) Format with original factory defects only
3) Format with grown defects only (discarding factory defects)
4) Format with existing defects (factory and grown defects)
5) Format with provided defects only (discarding factory and existing
grown defects)
6) Format with provided defects in addition to factory defects
(discarding existing grown defects)
7) Format with provided defects in addition to existing grown defects
(discarding factory defects)
8) Format with provided defects in addition to existing defects
All options but 4) must be followed by a special Defect List Header and options
5) – 8) must additionally be followed by Defect Descriptor blocks.
So, as HDToolsBox, nor FaaastPrep, won't let you select an option with
low-level-format, I think they will default to option 4). This would be useless
if the existing bad block list on the drive accidently happened to be corrupt,
e.g. _all_ blocks on the drive marked as bad or some such…
But I don't know for sure…
– wkc – … via AP from Hamburg, Germany
Werner,
Those options are available on most SCSI drives. They're not unique to
Quantum drives. They are part of the common command set (CCS). The command is
the same…the option bits to the command select which of the list you desire.
There should be a default (0 in the option bits).
Don
>> … there should be a default (0 in the option bits)
Don,
exactly, that is what I suspected. A `0' in all option bits will format the
unit with existing defects (factory and grown defects).
If for any reason the map of the grown defects on the disk is dramatically
wrong, you are not able to erase or rebuild the map with this default.
– wkc – … via AP from Hamburg, Germany
Hi John!
>> It wont? Gee, I wonder what that button labeled "Low Level Format Drive" is
for then? You suppose someone at CBM put it there to fool the rest of us <g>. I
used it to Low-Level format my Toshiba MK535B drive. I guess the only reason it
took 15-minutes to come back and say it was ready was because CBM put in a
timing loop. Gee, those guys are such pranksters <g>.
<<
Believe me, it won't! If you use a scsi monitor (I have written one for
debugging the Oktagon and ATAPI devices) you'll see that HDToolBox does NOT
issue a SCSI Format command (code 0x04) to the drive. I checked this again
after I read your message.
It simply clears the harddisks RDB by using TD_Format which is NOT the same.
BTW, I am talking about HDToolBox shipped with Workbench 3.1, older versions
may be different.
Why they called it "low level format" instead of "format" or "make drive empty"
I don't know.
>> Are you saying that HDToolBox low level formatting is bogus, or that the
Quantum drives require a special type of low level formatting? <<
HDToolBox is bogus.
Oliver
Well Oliver, that's good to know. I guess most of us just assumed that if
HDToolBox included a "Low Level Format" selection then it should perform that
function. From now on, I'll be wary of it and use something else. Actually,
most of the time if I need to prep a drive, it's one of my SyQuest-270 carts,
and I normally never low level format those anyway. I just partition it, write
the RDB, and AmigaDOS format.
// John (Warp 4040 & Emplant Quadra 840)
\X/ Mercury@ins.infonet.net
>> Actually, most of the time if I need to prep a drive, it's one of my
SyQuest-270 carts, and I normally never low level format those anyway. I just
partition it, write the RDB, and AmigaDOS format. <<
Yes, John! I don't lowlevel format drives just for fun either.. But sometimes a
low-level format is the only way to "repair" a dead disk. It once happened to
me that my Seagate Barracuda 2 gig drive suddendly died (well, actually I was a
bit guilty on that.. I popped the SCSI connector in/out while power was on). It
really was "dead as a doornail", and lowlevel format from HDToolBox didn't
work. Then I tried to REALLY lowlevel format the beast by sending a SCSI Format
Unit command. And – surprise! – it worked. It took very long, but the drive is
now working as before. It didn't loose capacity either.
Another reason to lowlevel format: Some SCSI drives do remap bad sectors "on
the fly", or you can instruct them to reassign sectors. If sectors are
reassigned and you do a lowlevel format now, some drives are clever enough to
mark these sectors as bad. This means: The "bad" sector is not remapped to a
spare sector, but the sector after the bad one will be the next block number.
This reduces the seek overhead for accessing a bunch of sectors sectors with a
"bad" one in the middle.
Oliver
Oliver,
what's the filename for HDInstTools (as I don't seem to be able to find it)?
Thanks,
// Christian "ELP" Busse
\X/ near Frankfurt, Germany
Hello Christian.
It is OKTINS.LHA (weird name… had to look it up myself).
It is in AmigaUser/DiskUtilities.
Oliver
John,
HDToolbox, like all the other tools I mentioned, locks up as soon as it
accesses the drive. BTW, I tried to run the drive from the external connector
of my SupraDrive 500XP as well. The programs dodn't lockup but HDToolbox showed
an error 44 whenever I tried to make it write something to the drive (save
changes)…
// Christian "ELP" Busse
\X/ near Frankfurt, Germany
I used GVPExpertPrep with my Quantum 500 (?+or-?) and it worked fine.
Hank