To get full use of your 233GB drive YOU WILL need the scsi patch. Otherwise go safely upto 8GB and waste the remaining space!
Your format crashes are probably asociated with an unsupported HDD size
Again you can only reach 8GB without patching, nothing else!
Simple Guide:
-Dowbload the scsi patch (make sure its either version 43.45 or 44.2)
-Make sure you have spatch executable in your C: directory
-make the patch according to docs using the cli
-copy the newscsi.device to for eg: DEVS:
-download loadmodule utiltity from aminet
-edit your startup sequence and place a line like LOADMODULE DEVS:NEWSCSI:DEVICE, just before the line that runs the Setpatch command.
-edit the setpatch line: adding the parameter NOSCSIUPDATE
-Reboot and voila!
Good Luck, the difficult part is patching the scsi.device correctly!