From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Jul 8 22:13:20 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D16E737B400 for ; Mon, 8 Jul 2002 22:13:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from spqr.osg.gov.bc.ca (spqr.osg.gov.bc.ca [142.32.102.24]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5DBB343E09 for ; Mon, 8 Jul 2002 22:13:17 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from Cy.Schubert@osg.gov.bc.ca) Received: from passer.osg.gov.bc.ca (passer.osg.gov.bc.ca [142.32.110.29]) by spqr.osg.gov.bc.ca (Postfix) with ESMTP id 181069EF18; Mon, 8 Jul 2002 22:13:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cwsys.cwsent.com (cwsys2 [10.1.2.1]) by passer.osg.gov.bc.ca (8.12.5/8.12.3) with ESMTP id g695DGOX038204; Mon, 8 Jul 2002 22:13:16 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from cy@cwsent.com) Received: from cwsys (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by cwsys.cwsent.com (8.12.5/8.12.3) with ESMTP id g695DFfP078057; Mon, 8 Jul 2002 22:13:15 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from cy@cwsys.cwsent.com) Message-Id: <200207090513.g695DFfP078057@cwsys.cwsent.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.5 07/13/2001 with nmh-1.0.4 Reply-To: Cy Schubert - CITS Open Systems Group From: Cy Schubert - CITS Open Systems Group X-os: FreeBSD X-Sender: cy@cwsent.com To: Terry Lambert Cc: Julian Elischer , Luigi Rizzo , Matthew Dillon , hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: offtopic: low level format of IDE drive. In-Reply-To: Message from Terry Lambert of "Mon, 08 Jul 2002 18:40:05 PDT." <3D2A3EF5.9BAAE12A@mindspring.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Mon, 08 Jul 2002 22:13:15 -0700 Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG In message <3D2A3EF5.9BAAE12A@mindspring.com>, Terry Lambert writes: > Julian Elischer wrote: > > According to the specs I had access to at Whistle they were pretty much > > the same low level device with different interface logic. > > The ATA drives I have seen had a format capacity > > just like their scsi cousins, just hard to find. > > Actually, if you read through the thread, you will see the format > track was taken out of the ATA specification. You have to know a > magic incantation to talk to the drive firmware (hence my vendor > tool recomendation, and my question "Who is the manufacturer?"). That is understandable. For example, Western Digital has not supported a real format track command since as far back as 1991. The WDAC-280 documentation states that the drive supported a logical format command that would fill existing sectors with zeros. It also supported marking sectors bad to provide backward compatibility with older MFM drives. IIRC, the old IDE specification stated that vendor implementation of the IDE format track command was at the discretion of the vendor. The command could format a track, zero out a track, or do nothing. Using the vendor's supplied utilities to format and mark bad sectors is always recommended. -- Cheers, Phone: 250-387-8437 Cy Schubert Fax: 250-387-5766 Team Leader, Sun/Alpha Team Email: Cy.Schubert@osg.gov.bc.ca Open Systems Group, CITS Ministry of Management Services Province of BC FreeBSD UNIX: cy@FreeBSD.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message