Formatting IDE drive on Workbench 2.0

[scumble]

I'd like to see if I can make use of an old 4 gig drive with the AlfaData IDE interface I have, but I can't figure out how to partition and do a low level format. HDToolbox doesn't see any disks in the first place, so I'm unsure of what process I should follow...

[Thomas]

HDToolbox only looks on scsi.device. IIRC the device name for the AlfaData is oktagon.device. Unfortunately HDToolbox does not let you change the default in the 2.0 version.

Get HDInstTool from Aminet and change the device name in the tooltypes. There should also be an install disk coming with the AlfaData which contains HDInstTools already configured to find drives on the controller.

However, you *never* need to low-level-format an IDE drive. You don't even need to format the partitions. Always use quick format which is much faster and totally sufficient.

Bye,
Thomas

[Brian]

On a new disk quickformat is just fine, some filesystems/devices even requier it but for an old 4Gb disk of unknown quality it's always best to do a full format the first time just to make sure there's no damages on the disk, at least I rather have a longer format time and have that in the clear than have a flying format just to find my data go corrupt or worse later on.

[adolescent]

AFAIK, HDToolbox included with WB2.04 (and later) support the SCSI_DEVICE_NAME tooltype.  

ex.
SCSI_DEVICE_NAME=oktagon.device

So, depending on what version of the install disks you have, you might be able to get going with what you have.

[patrik]

I dont think the WB2.x HDToolBox supports the use of tooltypes to select another device than scsi.device, but I know for sure that it supports another device if you start it from a shell and just type the device name after HDToolBox - "HDToolBox oktagon.device" for example.

And as already mentioned you should not need to lowlevel format the drive. Also avoid partitions over 2GB size and make sure you dont put any partitions beyond the 4GB barrier if the disk is a bit bigger than 4GB, say 4.3GB. This as data written to the part after the 4GB barrier will be written to the beginning of your harddrive, destroying the first partition and if you are unlucky also the bootblock (rdb).


/Patrik

[scumble]

adolescent wrote:
AFAIK, HDToolbox included with WB2.04 (and later) support the SCSI_DEVICE_NAME tooltype.  

ex.
SCSI_DEVICE_NAME=oktagon.device

So, depending on what version of the install disks you have, you might be able to get going with what you have.

That worked fine. Thanks HDToolBox recognised my existing drive, so I set up a Workbench disk accordingly to try and format the other drive.
It's certainly very slow doing a format...

[scumble]

It started out so well, but the old drive is far too knackered to be of any use!

On another note, does anyone know if the AlfaData's interface will support two drives?

[Brian]

Most IDE interfaces support 2 drivers, though not all. Even if it doesn't support it I can't see any harm in trying.