Can't format hdd

[Power12]

Hi, I can't format my Seagate IDE hard drive (ST380215A), WB tells it's read only - I've made partitions with HDToolBox, tryied PFS/03, SFS and other file system options, blocksize=512k, maxtransfer=0x1FE00  (and less), I use IDEFix (but can't format partitions less than 4GB too). Disk is OK for MacOS and Win, and cable is OK too so I just don't know what's the matter, maybe it's because too much rpm (I've succefully installed another Seagate drive before, that was old one 1.1GB only), tell any suggestions pls.

[paul1981]

What amiga are you trying to use it with?
Is your PSU struggling maybe?
Have you tried a shorter cable?
Absolutely certain that jumpers are okay?
Or maybe that drive doesn't like PIO modes...far fetched but who knows.
Or maybe there's a bad block where the amiga is trying to write the partition data/RDB.    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Rigid_Disk_Block
I know years ago I used to download the Seagate hard drive diagnostic tools and run tests on my Seagate drives.  That's all I can think of right now.

Take a look at this though:
http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/fat95

In the C folder in this archive there's a command called "dd".  With this command you can copy blocks from one hard drive to another, from one hard drive to a file, from a file to a hard drive etc etc.  It's very easy to use and the instructions are in the English folder within the fat95 instructions.
You can copy any hard drive/backup anything with this little command.  Because it bypasses the filesystem and doesn't care what the drive is, I thought you could use it to test your Seagate by writing data to it from a file, particularly the first few blocks.  Infact, if you connect your 80gig and your existing hard drive together, then you could do a direct copy from your old drive to your new 80gig one and once it has finished (may take a while depending on size of your existing drive) turn it off, make the 80gig master and see if she boots.  Just be careful though to not get mixed up with unit numbers and thus erasing/modifying the wrong drive. Units numbers start from 0.

I have also used another a tool that gave device information which maybe helpful, but I can't think what that is called now but I may be able to find it tomorrow.  It just may well be this though:

http://m68k.aminet.net/package/disk/misc/SCSIQuery

[Franko]

@ Power12

I can't see why WB is telling you the HD is read only unless you've been using the "Lock" command in the C: dir...

To prevent an HD from being written to (ie: write protect it) you would type in a CLI/Shell...

Lock DH0: ON

or to make it Write enabled again you would type...

Lock DH0: OFF

But unless you have used this yourself or it's in the StartUp-Sequence or User-StartUp I don't really see why your getting a "Read Only" error... very puzzling... :confused:

[Power12]

I made copy of my old drive with dd, my new HDD boots, but with HDToolBox I can't access disk space over 4GB (size of my old HDD that was source for copy). Though tool determines Seagate's capacity properly (about 74GB) I can't make new partition outside that 4GB area. I tryied to format one of partitions with WB but it still gives write protection fault though I can save and delete files. Yet I learned Format64 can format a partition, but I when it's done I can't access it. And yet I tryed Lock SDH0: off but it doesn't help, so it seems drive isn't locked by software.

[Jope]

Don't use DD for copying Amiga drives unless the destination drive is identical to the source drive.

Partition the new drive separately, connect both to something running AmigaOS and copy the files over in the shell with

copy source: destination: all clone

[Thomas]

I made copy of my old drive with dd, my new HDD boots, but with HDToolBox I can't access disk space over 4GB (size of my old HDD that was source for copy).

http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/fixhddsize