I need some help......

[iamaboringperson]

Do your home work people, I have!

:roll:

Yep. And you seem so well informed DoomMaster! Keep up the good work!! :lol:

[DoomMaster]

To iamaboringperson:

Thanks dude !     :-D

[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.

[Targhan]

@DoomMaster

Please explain the A1200HD and A4000, both of which come with IDE harddrives?

Block == CHS.  Cylindar, Head, Sector.  This involves the basic geometry of a drive.

Finally about lowlevel formats: Don't be absurd.  No one should ever have to lowlevel format a drive in their Amiga or any other computer. EVER.

[iamaboringperson]

What I find funniest of all about that #### is how he thinks that a low-level format is platform dependant! HA!

:lol:

[N7VQM]

DoomMaster wrote:
To iamaboringperson:

Amiga computers are suppose to use SCSI hard drives, NOT IDE hard drives.

A computer is supposed to use whatever interface is built into it.  The system designer(s) is/are the one(s) who decide what's 'supposed' to be in there.

 Only people that really do not know what they are doing would even think about installing an inferior hard drive

Notions of inferior are all in your head.  It's all about what you really need.  The mechanical parts of SCSI and IDE drives are not sigificantly different.    Also, you must keep in mind that SCSI isn't just for hard disks.  IDE is only for harddisks.  Because of this Integraded Drive Electronics can be less expensive because they only have one base to cover.

 So the platters in an Amiga hard disk does not always spin at the same speed.

I want to know exactly where you get this from. Book, author and page, please.  Pretend it's a bibliography entry for a report.

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

Sector and blocks are logical conventions.

It does NOT hurt the drive, because all you are doing is writing information about the drive to the boot blocks 0 and 1.

Ahem.  To low-level format a hard disk is to place Zeros in all magnetic domains, among other things. It is not limited to blocks 0 and 1.

[DoomMaster]

To Piru:

WHATEVER, DUDE !!!!    Are you attacking ME personally?!   I think that YOU are the trouble maker, not me.  You have done nothing but harass me.  Just go back and LOOK at all of your NEGATIVE posts!     :-x

[iamaboringperson]

hmmm.... Let's see what Seagate have to say about low level formating...

one
two

So, if it only effects the first two blocks, then why can it take several hours?

Or are Seagate wrong, and DoomMaster correct?

[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 ;-) ?

[Targhan]

@DoomMaster

Piru is correct, you have posted very erroneous information that could potentially lead to hardware failure in someone else's machine.

Furthermore, much of the information you were discussing was regarding AmigaOS 1.2/1.3, an A2090/1 controller, and very small harddrives.  I can understand where you may think that PrepHD is a lowlevel format, but it is not.  Setting up a MountList, a PrepHD, and InstallHD from AmigaDOS 1.3 is far different than a lowlevel format.

Please double check your information before someone loses hardware.  I understand your enthusiasm, but you did misinterpret the manual.

@DoomMaster:

Piru is not a guy to argue with on this. Not because he's angry or aggressive, but because

a) he's not the kid in the picture (anymore)
b) he's an operating systems programmer and one of the best coders on the Amiga platform
c) he's right, and you're wrong!!

Do you happen to shop at Budget Computers, by the way? It's not far from you, you must know it..

[amigamad]

he smarter folks only use SCSI hard drives on an Amiga computer.

Only my cdtv and my a4000 and my a1000 have scusi my a1200 is ide only becauase they are cheaper and easier to setup besides ide drives are half the price and twice as big. :-)

[amigamad]

Double post sorry.

[TanZyr]

Piru/N7VQM: I think I know where he's getting his facts confused re: rotation speed - floppy drives. Everyone (with a brain) knows that Amiga floppy drives (like our "sister" - the Mac) use variable speed floppy drives, unlike PC's which are fixed at 300rpm.

The part about low-level formatting a drive is just plain wrong. EVERY manufacturer of hard disk storage solutions state that it shouldn't be done at all by the end user since it's already taken care of at the factory. They typically follow with disclaimers about how you can damage your hardware, etc.

The ONLY thing that's remotely considered "platform specific" about hard disk storage would be how it's filesystem formatted, not low-levelled, since the latter has NOTHING to do with any platform whatsoever.

DoomMaster: No offense, but if you doubt a word of what Piru, N7VQM, or I've said... by all means, try the following test: Begin a low-level format of a drive you could care less about then simulate a power outtage by killing power to the computer. I can guarantee you that drive will be dead, even to low-level SCSI commands, no matter if you put it in a PC (with a SCSI adapter), Mac, or Amiga.

Once again, only try this experiment with a harddrive you can afford to kill, since you certainly WILL kill it.

[Kronos]

@TanZyr

BEEEEEEEEP WRONG  :-P  :-o

Amiga-floppy-drives are fixed speed and just the same as the PC-ones on the
HW side (apart from the little flip-flop needed by external ones), I even once had
a drive from an Atari-ST connected to my A500  :oops:

The Amiga-HW just writes a shorter sync-gap, and thats whats keeping an PC
from reading Amiga-formated floppies.

[TanZyr]

Kronos:

Sorry, matey. Amiga floppy drives spin at half the speed of PC floppies, ergo one of the reasons PC drives have such a hard time reading Amiga floppies. Ask Jens, he's the expert with floppies.

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...