Formatting SCSI HDs salvaged from Macs

[Tenacious]

Should used (or new) SCSI HDs be "Low Level" formatted before normal formatting?  Can this result in some permanent loss of capacity?

Normal or Quick format?

[Zac67]

Actually, SCSI HDDs can't be low level formatted at all (yes, I know - server grade HDDs can, but there's no need for that here nor tools for the Amiga). Low level formatting rewrites all sector headers and gaps and is done in the factory.

You probably mean zeroing all blocks (normal format) - well, doesn't hurt, but isn't required. It will however do some testing of the surface which might have grown bad blocks over time. Those will be automatically remapped during zeroing the disk. No, you won't lose any capacity, remapping is done by using reserved blocks. And you won't want any bad blocks in use, would you?

[Motormouth]

Tenacious:

I noticed that you have several pieces of GVP hardware.
The GVP expertprep software DOES allow you to low level format your hard drive.
The gvpscsi.device does allow for this.
I think you can use the expertprep with commodore's scsi devices

in a shell to type
expertprep scsi.device

however will the scsi rom in a commodore scsi allow for low level format?  I don't remember.

I think Zac67 is correct; the low level format does zero the hard drive.
I also agree with Zac67 that the low level format is NOT necessary.

However it is nice to completely delete out old hard drives.
You could use a low level format to do this or use a degaussing coil.
I personally use a homemade degaussing coil, but have used low level format in the past on my GVP hardware.

Be careful with a degaussign coil.  you could accidentally erase floppies for mess up your old CRT monitor.

[Zac67]

Never - ever - degauss a hard drive. Degaussing would require an insanely intensive field (coercivity on MR/GMR drives is WAY higher than on floppies/tapes) and would destroy all servo information on the platters. Without the servo information the drive is useless as they cannot be rewritten.

Again: there's no way to really low level format a drive on an Amiga, no matter what any software may be trying to tell you.

[Tenacious]

I'm confused.  Of what use is the Low-level Format Drive button in HDToolbox included with OS 3.1?

[zipper]

Remnants from 80's and MFM disks.

[Zac67]

Remnants from 80's and MFM disks.

Yep. The XT drive that shipped in the A590 could be LL formatted, for instance (also had a stepper actuator).