[Coco] Formatting OS-9 hard drives

[David Ladd]

​Allen,

Saddly for what is internally happening with the firmware during the so
called low level format am not sure.  Would have to see if there is some
specific documentation for it some place.
A 850MB Quantum SCSI HDD I had when you issued a low level format it
actually did a full sector scan on its own and if it found bad sectors it
would map them out and use the so called spare sectors.

IDE drives adopted this spare sectors operation later as a way so that the
OS didn't have to worry about bad sectors as much as the drive would
attempt to take care of that.

Working in the service department at a computer store learned a few things
on that. :D
Also why I still try to keep a working system that has a SCSI card in it so
I can still use Linux to backup and restore stuff when needed.
​

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On Sun, Feb 19, 2017 at 10:12 AM, Allen Huffman <alsplace at pobox.com> wrote:

> On Feb 18, 2017, at 11:49 PM, David Ladd <davidwladd at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > As far as the EZ135's go there is no low level formatting them.
> > The EZ135's IDE, SCSI, & Parallel drives all respond the same way.  The
> > carts are factory low level formatted and thus just ignore the low level
> > format command.  I know the Syquest SQ44 & SQ88 drives also worked that
> way
> > where you gave them a low level format command and they just chunked for
> a
> > few seconds and then were done.
>
> What is happening when I say yes to Low Level format, then? It takes quite
> some time, like many many minutes, before returning.
>
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