I need some help......

[Piru]

Next: You MUST Low-Level Format the Hard Drive.

No you don't. Don't low level format.

The hard disk is low level formatted at the factory and you do not need to (and must NOT) do it yourself. Even if you use the same hard disk on different system (pc, mac, sun, sgi, whatever) before, the physical layout remain the same, and NO low level formatting is required when the disk is moved.

Don't low level format.

[Piru]

@DoomMaster

Yes, they are low-level formatted at the factory, but they are formatted for a PC, they are NOT low-level formatted for an Amiga computer. Do your homework, buddy.

There is no such thing as "PC low level format". All hard disks work as-is on Amiga.

Apparently you mix physical and logical disk format.

Now, I could do some sarcastic comment about doing your homework, but I won't. It's quite apparent you're not ready to listen or learn.

[Piru]

You do NOT know what you are talking about. I actually work in this industry and have been working with computers since 1977. I DO know what I am talking about. You would be wise to listen to what I have to say. Many of you so-called tech people do not know what you are talking about and are actually just confusing the poor folks that really do need help. I am here to offer that help!

No matter how long you have been on the industry doesn't help the fact that you're wrong here.

If you are unable to admit your mistake and find out the real facts, it's your loss. However I would advise you to stop spreading the misinformation about this low-level format issue, since it can potentially lead into unusable hard disks.

Nothing is sadder than ignorance and denial.

[Piru]

@DoomMaster

I don't get into your rant about 'IDE vs. SCSI' because that still makes sense somewhat, at least if you don't have proper IDE controller on your Amiga.

However...

And ALL SCSI hard drives for an AMIGA computer MUST be low-level formatted. The main reason for this is because the low-level format on most hard drives are done for a PC, which uses a constant speed (the platters spin at the same speed and never change). The Amiga on the other hand uses variable speed drives (just like the famous Commodore 64 did). So the platters in an Amiga hard disk does not always spin at the same speed.

That's total bullsh*t. Hard disks always rotate on the same speed (except when spinning up/down), regardless of the host system.

Also, the PC uses Sectors and the Amiga uses Blocks.

Total bullsh*t again. The physical addressing is all the same on all systems. Whether the operating system (BIOS is part of it) set some limitations, is completely unrelated.

All of this new type of information has to be added to the hard drives boot blocks 0 and 1. That is where the Low-Level Format comes to play.

Again bullsh*t. There is no such information on blocks 0 and 1. You perhaps try to mean RigidDiskBlock, that is located on the first 16 blocks of the hard disk, but it does NOT contain any information about rotation speed or addressing type. RDB can be written at any stage, *without* need for low level format. It's all software.

Have you ever noticed that you can NOT ever use blocks 0 and 1 on an Amiga hard drive?

Now you're mixing things again. Two first blocks of *mounted* filesystem (de_Reserved) are reserved for bootblock (albeit never used on hard disk). These two reserved blocks have nothing to do with actual disk start or RDB. Heck, they're not even located on disk beginning, but two first blocks of the partition.

Or perhaps you're mixing it to two reserved cylinders (can be more, some tools let you reserve more storage for RDB+data) of the disk? These two cylinders (or 'tracks') are reserved for RDB and related data (partition blocks (PART), badblocks (BADB), filesystems (FSHD & LSEG) and such). Again these have nothing to do with physical layout of the disk and no low-level format is required to use them.

This means that the first partition starts at cylinder (track) 2 way after the disk start. So these reserved 2 blocks are never located at disk start (block 0), if using RDB. Without RDB (mounting the hard disk directly from mountlist as one partition) it's possible to have these two reserved blocks at disk start, however.

If you find that you can, then you have not properly formatted your hard drive and you WILL have problems with it down the road

More bullsh*t. As long as you initialize the disk you're just fine. No need to low-level format.

By the way, if you do ever screw up the hard drive by doing a low-level format, it means that you did not do the first step correctly (defining the drives parameters).

More bullshit. Low level format does NOT require you to set up the drive parameters (if HDToolBox requires it, it's just HDTB. The SCSI command itself requires no knowlege of the medium).

You can always go back and re-enter the correct information and then do another low-level format. It does NOT hurt the drive, because all you are doing is writing information about the drive to the boot blocks 0 and 1.

Yet more bullsh*t. Low level format writes the whole physical disk structure again, and you lose *ALL* information on the hard disk (not just blocks 0 and 1). EVERYTHING is gone and there is no way to get it back.

Also, if the low level format is aborted for some reason (for example power outage or reset), the disk can become unusable, not even accepting the low level format command again.

This coupled with the fact that low level format can take hours, it's quite probable the user gives up and powercycles/resets the machine -> hard disk lost.

Do your home work people, I have!

What you have proven is that you have absolutely no clue whatsoever, and need to go back to school.

Basically I am starting to believe that you're not real, but some sort of humorous fake character created to stirr some trouble.

[Piru]

@DoomMaster

I'm terribly sorry if I offended you in any way, but you're trying to feed your false information as facts. Some ppl might ruin their hardware because of that.

Therefore I feel obliged to correct you.

Perhaps I sound negative because I don't end my every sentence with :-) or ;-) ?

[Piru]

re: variable speed floppies - mostly this occurred on the Mac, and Amiga OS 1.x, esp commercial games, from what I recall. Might be mis-remembering, though...

You mis-remember.

You can't change the rotation speed of the amiga floppy drive via software. It's either not rotating or rotating.

The only way to get something in between would be to quickly turn the motor on/off, but this would result in "jumpy ride" and inconsistent result between various floppy drives (or fail to work at all, depending on the hardware). It'd also be very deadly for the floppy drive and the disk.

The "slow speed" was used when manufacturing (==writing) these protected disks using some advanced mass duplication system called "Trace Machine". The slow speed allowed to write a long track that is imposible to write on real amiga. So, since the real amiga can't lower the speed the disk can't be copied.

For details, see CAPS FAQ.

So, only old Macs (and perhaps some other exotic hw?) used variable speed floppy drive.

[Piru]

Low level format:

Hard Disk Formatting and Capacity

In particular:

Low-level formatting is the process of outlining the positions of the tracks and sectors on the hard disk, and writing the control structures that define where the tracks and sectors are. This is often called a "true" formatting operation, because it really creates the physical format that defines where the data is stored on the disk. The first time that a low-level format ("LLF") is performed on a hard disk, the disk's platters start out empty. That's the last time the platters will be empty for the life of the drive. If an LLF is done on a disk with data on it already, the data is permanently erased (save heroic data recovery measures which are sometimes possible).

If you've explored other areas of this material describing hard disks, you have learned that modern hard disks are much more precisely designed and built, and much more complicated than older disks. Older disks had the same number of sectors per track, and did not use dedicated controllers. It was necessary for the external controller to do the low-level format, and quite easy to describe the geometry of the drive to the controller so it could do the LLF. Newer disks use many complex internal structures, including zoned bit recording to put more sectors on the outer tracks than the inner ones, and embedded servo data to control the head actuator. They also transparently map out bad sectors. Due to this complexity, all modern hard disks are low-level formatted at the factory for the life of the drive. There's no way for the PC to do an LLF on a modern IDE/ATA or SCSI hard disk, and there's no reason to try to do so.

...

STOP! Warning: You should never attempt to do a low-level format on an IDE/ATA or SCSI hard disk. Do not try to use BIOS-based low-level formatting tools on these newer drives. It's unlikely that you will damage anything if you try to do this (since the drive controller is programmed to ignore any such LLF attempts), but at best you will be wasting your time. A modern disk can usually be restored to "like-new" condition by using a zero-fill utility.

From: low level format

The distinction between high-level formatting and low-level formatting is important. It is not necessary to low-level format a disk to erase it: a high-level format will suffice for most purposes; by wiping out the control structures and writing new ones, the old information is lost and the disk appears as new. (Much of the old data is still on the disk, but the access paths to it have been wiped out.)

From: high level format

As I have said (probably too often, sorry) modern drives do not need to be low-level formatted by the end user, and in fact cannot be LLFed outside the factory due to their precision and complexity. However, it seems that the need to LLF hard disks on the part of users has never gone away. Like some primordial instinct, many PC users seem to have a fundamental desire to LLF their modern disks. Maybe it is built into the genetic code in some way yet undiscovered. ;^) In fact, even if it were possible, the vast majority of the time that someone "needs" to LLF a hard disk today, it is not really necessary. Many users jump quickly to wanting to try an "LLF" whenever they have a problem with their hard disk, much the way many jump to re-installing their operating system whenever it gives them trouble.

From: format utilities

In general Hard Disk Geometry and Low-Level Data Structures is a good read. And no, it's not PC only.


RDB structure:

- AmigaOS includes devices/hardblock.h

- Amiga Developer CD 2.1
ADCD_2.1:Reference/DevCon/Washington_1988/Devcon_Extras/HardDisk/HardBlocks
ADCD_2.1:Reference/HTML/Devices_Manual_guide/node0079.html
ADCD_2.1:Reference/HTML/Devices_Manual_guide/node007A.html
ADCD_2.1:Reference/HTML/Devices_Manual_guide/node007B.html
ADCD_2.1:Reference/HTML/Includes_and_Autodocs_2._guide/node0041.html
ADCD_2.1:Reference/HTML/Libraries_Manual_guide/node041F.html
ADCD_2.1:Reference/HTML/Libraries_Manual_guide/node0420.html
ADCD_2.1:Reference/HTML/Libraries_Manual_guide/node0421.html
ADCD_2.1:Reference/HTML/Libraries_Manual_guide/node0422.html
ADCD_2.1:Reference/HTML/Libraries_Manual_guide/node0423.html
ADCD_2.1:Reference/HTML/Libraries_Manual_guide/node0424.html