From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Jul 9 7:28:34 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 D58FB37B400 for ; Tue, 9 Jul 2002 07:28:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bilver.wjv.com (user38.net339.fl.sprint-hsd.net [65.40.24.38]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1115043E09 for ; Tue, 9 Jul 2002 07:28:30 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from bv@bilver.wjv.com) Received: (from bv@localhost) by bilver.wjv.com (8.11.6/8.11.6) id g69ESST01933 for hackers@FreeBSD.ORG; Tue, 9 Jul 2002 10:28:28 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from bv) Date: Tue, 9 Jul 2002 10:28:28 -0400 From: Bill Vermillion To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: low level format of an IDE drive Message-ID: <20020709142828.GC1723@wjv.com> Reply-To: bv@wjv.com References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.25i Organization: W.J.Vermillion / Orlando - Winter Park 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 Knocking over a stack of dishes in the heat sink freebsd-hackers-digest wondered out loud about: > ------------------------------ > > Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2002 14:08:27 -0700 (PDT) > From: Matthew Dillon > Subject: Re: offtopic: low level format of IDE drive. > > :One of my FreeBSD development boxes had a hernia last week > :when it lost power while writing to disk. The drive wrote out > :garbage to a track. > :I want to reformat the drive, (low level) but the bios doesn't > :have any support to do this (In the past That is how I did > :this). The machiine has 1 CD drive and no floppy.. > :anyone with any ideas as to how one can reformat a hard drive > :feel free to lend me a clue.. > Two things: > (1) dd if=/dev/zero of= bs=32k > This will force the drive to reassign broken sectors. Run this > command twice. If the second run of the command is successful > and does not stall (looking at running 'iostat 10' output will > tell you whether it stalled) then you are golden. > > Use the base device for the dd output file, e.g. like . > '/dev/ad0' Do not specify a slice or a partition . > (2) If the command fails for any reason other then hitting > the end of the media, or if it stalls on the second go-around, > throw the drive away and buy a new one. Not neccesarily true. I picked up some as-is where-is drives. MS's fdisk would take hours trying to map out bad spots, failures galore. I got the manufacturers format disk and these came back as if they never had a problem. Disks are available for Western Digital, Seagate, and Maxtor. I've found no others. I had a install on FreeBSD go astry because of an old-bios and could not get anything to work. It was a brand new warranted drive. Manufacturer 'recertify' - one of the options on the Maxtor disk - made everything lovely again. For SCSI problems I have access to an SGI and their low-level SCSI utility is wonderful - commercial version at hundreds. -- Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message