I've been one to learn that one must have patience at times when
dealing with certain operations to complete, but I think this time my
patience is probably a waste of time.

I was able to salvage some old Sun equipment before it went into the
trash: a Sparc 20, some external drives (Seagate), monitors, et
cetera. I was able to fully populate the SS20 with 64MB DIMMs, and I
have it up and running with Solaris 9 and all the latest MaintUpdate
and Sec/Rec patches as of morning 10 July. I have no BIG
plans/expectations of a SS20 (compared to today's much faster and
advanced technology), but, hey, it still allows me to try out
different things at home so that I don't screw up things at work on
the PrimePowers.

One of the external disks that I have is an external Seagate ST11200N.
The system sees it, but as a "drive type unknown". I did a
format/type and entered in the following:

2036 cyclinders
2 alternate
2038 total
14 heads
72 sectors
5400 RPM
and saved it with a name as "ST11200N"

I also see that another entry exists in there for "SUN1.05" which
gives the same parameters. When I'm done saving it off, it also comes
back with "disk not formatted". This makes sense since it could be
that the company completely took care of ensuring all sensitive info
was gone/inaccessible.

My real situation/question is this.....when I then try to do a
format/format, it comes back with "Are you sure...cannot be
interrupted" to which I answer "yes" and [ENTER], then then it says
"Formatting...".

I assume that it is doing so.....but it is taking an extremely long
time. I started at 10:00am Saturday morning and it is still
continuing on through 7:00am Sunday morning (now 21 hours). Even with
it being an old SS20, I can't see a 1.05Gb disk taking over 21 hours
to reformat. Obviously, I can't do anything else (i.e.
format/analyze) without the disk being first formatted.

Should I just chalk this one up wo being toast?

Richard

Richard E Sgrignoli (Richard.Sgrignoli@highmark.com) wrote:

: My real situation/question is this.....when I then try to do a
: format/format, it comes back with "Are you sure...cannot be
: interrupted" to which I answer "yes" and [ENTER], then then it says
: "Formatting...".

: I assume that it is doing so.....but it is taking an extremely long
: time. I started at 10:00am Saturday morning and it is still
: continuing on through 7:00am Sunday morning (now 21 hours). Even with
: it being an old SS20, I can't see a 1.05Gb disk taking over 21 hours
: to reformat. Obviously, I can't do anything else (i.e.
: format/analyze) without the disk being first formatted.

I don't think you should of done that.

Never low level format an scsi drive, especially seagate. You sent a command
to the drive which basically made a zombie out of it.

Not sure of the mechanics of it but this was a trap since the 15150's came
out (barracuda). The drives used to have been sent back to Seagate for
repair. Never found anything to bring them back to life.

-bruce
bje@ripco.com

Bruce Esquibel wrote:

> Never low level format an scsi drive, especially seagate. You sent a
> command to the drive which basically made a zombie out of it.

Certainly not. LL-Format is part of the SCSI spec, and it does no harm to
any SCSI disk drive. If a drive dies during a low-level format it would have
died under normal operation, too.

> Not sure of the mechanics of it but this was a trap since the 15150's
> came out (barracuda). The drives used to have been sent back to
> Seagate for repair. Never found anything to bring them back to life.

Then the drives have been faulty before. I have a bunch of Seagate ST15150s
here, most of them with Sun label, that have been low-level formatted
numerous times. At work we have hundreds of disks that also get erased
regularly by low-level format. Not a single one had a failure that can be
tracked back to a ll-format...

The rumor of ll-format destroying disks still sticks like glue but without
any data or evidence that supports it. This rumor basically comes from the
very old days of the first generation of IDE drives where a low-level format
destroyed the servo informations and rendered the disk unuseable. That's not
the case any more since EIDE drives (bigger than 540MB) became standard, and
it was never a problem for SCSI...

Benjamin

Richard E Sgrignoli wrote:

> My real situation/question is this.....when I then try to do a
> format/format, it comes back with "Are you sure...cannot be
> interrupted" to which I answer "yes" and [ENTER], then then it says
> "Formatting...".
>
> I assume that it is doing so.....but it is taking an extremely long
> time. I started at 10:00am Saturday morning and it is still
> continuing on through 7:00am Sunday morning (now 21 hours). Even with
> it being an old SS20, I can't see a 1.05Gb disk taking over 21 hours
> to reformat.

Well, that has nothing to do with the SS20 but with the disk. The low-level
format is done internal by the disc itself, not by the computer. The format
utility just tells the disk to execute a low-level format. The duration of
the low-level-format depends on the disk. I have 4GB drives that take around
45min while some 9GB drives just need 25mins. Years ago I had some old
Conner 5.25" full height disks with a capacity of a few hundred MBs.
Formatting one of those took over 10hrs...

21hrs sound a bit long, though. This is probably because the surface has
lots of defects, so even if the format finishes I wouldn't count on this
drive any more. I'd trash it.

Benjamin

On Sun, 11 Jul 2004 20:40:50 +0200, Benjamin Gawert wrote:
> Bruce Esquibel wrote:
>> Never low level format an scsi drive, especially seagate. You sent a
>> command to the drive which basically made a zombie out of it.
>
> Certainly not. LL-Format is part of the SCSI spec, and it does no harm to
> any SCSI disk drive. If a drive dies during a low-level format it would have
> died under normal operation, too.

Yes, well, it is supposed to be. The drive documentation for an IBM DDYS
drive also said so, and documented the command and its parameters, etc.
However, I had the same experience. I tried to do a low level format
(using Solaris format) on that IBM DDYS drive and it "went away forever".
Then (as documented) if you DO interrupt the format operation (after many
many hours) the insides are really toast, and the drive subsequently
always replies with some status interpreted like "unavailable, doing
format" (but it's not!). There appears to be no way to "reset" the drive
so that you can start over. I wonder why?

I later found (by web browsing) a small "readme" like .pdf intended for
Windoze users of the same IBM drive. In there, it warned you NOT to low
level format that drive, and said that you "might" (?) turn it zombie.

FWIW, the reason I tried to reformat that IBM was that its primary defects
list came up with 8K entries, all of which were all zeros. Huh? I had
never seen that before. It was also not documented. I thought the previous
owner of that drive had trashed the defects tables somehow, so I wanted to
"start over". I had always been able to do that with Fujitsu and Seagate
drives before. Big mistake! Then it turned out that Hitachi had bought
IBM disk service and warrantee business, and that drive was still under
warrantee, so I was able to exchange it for a rebuilt unit that worked
great. It still reports 8K primary defects with all zeros, though. I now
know that is "normal" (tho undocumented), and not to touch it.

The buzz seems to coalesce into: (some?) "new" SCSI drives do all their
defect management internally! Don't touch! What I find disconcerting is
that their documentation is not accurate or up to date, and their status
(e.g. primary defects) "lies" (and that is NOT documented anywhere!).

I find it totally inexcusable that the drive would even allow itself to be
turned into a zombie. I might have some sympathy with the approach "these
drives do their own internal defects management, don't touch!" But then
the drive should REFUSE to accept the command (F'off!), not blithely go
trundling down the yellow brick road to OZ (er, no offense Aussies!). I
would consider this "feature" of these drives to be a (serious) "bug".

Plug for Hitachi: great warrantee replacement policy and service!

>> Not sure of the mechanics of it but this was a trap since the 15150's
>> came out (barracuda). The drives used to have been sent back to
>> Seagate for repair. Never found anything to bring them back to life.
>
> Then the drives have been faulty before. I have a bunch of Seagate ST15150s
> here, most of them with Sun label, that have been low-level formatted
> numerous times. At work we have hundreds of disks that also get erased
> regularly by low-level format. Not a single one had a failure that can be
> tracked back to a ll-format...
>
> The rumor of ll-format destroying disks still sticks like glue but without
> any data or evidence that supports it. This rumor basically comes from the
> very old days of the first generation of IDE drives where a low-level format
> destroyed the servo informations and rendered the disk unuseable. That's not
> the case any more since EIDE drives (bigger than 540MB) became standard, and
> it was never a problem for SCSI...

Well, that was also my experience, and I can only speak about what I saw.
I agree with you that it should not be the case, but I did "lose" a drive.
BTW, there were also rumours on the web about faulty firmware on that line
of drives, and I noticed that the one that was sent back as a replacement
had the firmware upgraded (obviously). Now I'm still loathe to try LL
reformatting that (or any?) drive, unless it's already likely "toast" and
I have nothing else to lose. It didn't used to be that way.

p.s. You might be right about the "faulty before" viz. firmware rumours
about the IBM DDYS drives, but I'm "spooked" now! Only as a last resort.

p.p.s. I also suspect that maybe those "new" drives don't really conform
fully to the SCSI spec, and might in fact be unable to properly recreate
the servo information (or whatever). If the LL format manages to complete
in one pass just rewriting what's already there, then it's OK? If ANYTHING
should happen to interfere with the timing of any sync signals, then the
drive does not have the internal electronics to recreate it, but requires
an external formatter. Just my conjecture, but makes sense from my (and
others) observations. Something about the LL format does not add up.

--
Juhan Leemet
Logicognosis, Inc.

Juhan Leemet wrote:

> Yes, well, it is supposed to be. The drive documentation for an IBM
> DDYS drive also said so, and documented the command and its
> parameters, etc. However, I had the same experience. I tried to do a
> low level format (using Solaris format) on that IBM DDYS drive and it
> "went away forever". Then (as documented) if you DO interrupt the
> format operation (after many many hours) the insides are really
> toast, and the drive subsequently always replies with some status
> interpreted like "unavailable, doing format" (but it's not!). There
> appears to be no way to "reset" the drive so that you can start over.
> I wonder why?

Simply because the ll-format is certainly _not_ the reason for the drive
dying. DDYS are very unreliable, we had lots of them, and they had a very
high failure rate.

If Your drive dies during a ll-format it for sure would have also died under
normal use. The thing is that if a hard disk dies within normal operation
it's just bad luck, if it dies during a ll-format people still thing it must
be because of the format...

As to having the "inside toast" if You interrupt a ll-format, that's
nonsense as well. It's no problem to interrupt a ll-format, just start it
again and have it completed (of course this requires a disk that isn't
faulty). I have interrupted ll-formats (both willingly and errorneously)
many times, and never found the "inside toast". The only problem with partly
formatted disks is that You should not use them for storing data since the
partial format might lead to data corruption. So if the ll-format gets
interrupted just start over again and after it finishes the disk is ready.

I'm not sucking this out of my fingers btw. We do a lot of special
applications development (especially with rugged equipment), and thus we
have a clean room, our own disk specialists, and a very good contact to most
disk manufacturers. I often had conversations about low-level-format, and
every disk specialist confirmed the experience I made with a good number of
disks: a ll-format does not harm an SCSI disk that is healthy, it does not
kill SCSI disks, and if a disk dies during a ll-format it for sure would
have died under normal operation, too.

> I later found (by web browsing) a small "readme" like .pdf intended
> for Windoze users of the same IBM drive. In there, it warned you NOT
> to low level format that drive, and said that you "might" (?) turn it
> zombie.
>
> FWIW, the reason I tried to reformat that IBM was that its primary
> defects list came up with 8K entries, all of which were all zeros.
> Huh? I had never seen that before.

That's normal on DDYS...

> The buzz seems to coalesce into: (some?) "new" SCSI drives do all
> their defect management internally!

Right. That's called "defect-free interface" and standard on all disk drives
for at certainly 8+ years now.

> Don't touch! What I find
> disconcerting is that their documentation is not accurate or up to
> date, and their status (e.g. primary defects) "lies" (and that is NOT
> documented anywhere!).

Well, it doesn't really lie. The table is 8k of size, and without any error
it simply shows zero entries.

Internal defects management is standard for several years now, and not a
problem for a ll-format...

> I find it totally inexcusable that the drive would even allow itself
> to be turned into a zombie. I might have some sympathy with the
> approach "these drives do their own internal defects management,
> don't touch!" But then the drive should REFUSE to accept the command
> (F'off!), not blithely go trundling down the yellow brick road to OZ
> (er, no offense Aussies!). I would consider this "feature" of these
> drives to be a (serious) "bug".

That's no bug, and You didn't turn it into a Zombie by ll-formatting it. The
real "bug" of these drives is to die from one minute to the other, half a
year ago we have threwn out most of our DDYS drives simply because of the
high failure rate.

> Plug for Hitachi: great warrantee replacement policy and service!

Well, it would be difficult to handle it worse than IBM...

> Well, that was also my experience, and I can only speak about what I
> saw. I agree with you that it should not be the case, but I did
> "lose" a drive.

Well, You lost a drive that You even would have lost in normal operation...

> BTW, there were also rumours on the web about faulty
> firmware on that line of drives, and I noticed that the one that was
> sent back as a replacement had the firmware upgraded (obviously).

There indeed was faulty firmware. When I remembered right the problem was
possible data corruption. There was a firmware update IBM offered and that
we had to apply to all our DDYS (mostly used in RS/6000 Servers)..

> Now
> I'm still loathe to try LL reformatting that (or any?) drive, unless
> it's already likely "toast" and I have nothing else to lose. It
> didn't used to be that way.

Well, You have to see it from another point of view. If the drive doesn't
overlife a ll-format it for sure isn't worth being used to store anything on
it, no matter if it's dead because of defect media, head crash, or a buggy
firmware (if it really would have been because of faulty firmware it's still
better to have it crash at ll-format instead of having data corruption which
is way more problematic to detect in time).

> p.s. You might be right about the "faulty before" viz. firmware
> rumours about the IBM DDYS drives, but I'm "spooked" now! Only as a
> last resort.
>
> p.p.s. I also suspect that maybe those "new" drives don't really
> conform fully to the SCSI spec, and might in fact be unable to
> properly recreate the servo information (or whatever).

No, the servo tracking information is recorded on factory only and can't be
touched by a ll-format. Neither on IBMs nor on any other disk with voice
coil actuator...

> If the LL
> format manages to complete in one pass just rewriting what's already
> there, then it's OK? If ANYTHING should happen to interfere with the
> timing of any sync signals, then the drive does not have the internal
> electronics to recreate it, but requires an external formatter.

Sorry,no. All SCSI (and IDE) drives are intelligent, and no matter on what
platform You do the format, it always is done internally by the drive. There
are no external formatters for around 20yrs now...

Benjamin

Benjamin Gawert (bgawert@gmx.de) wrote:

: I'm not sucking this out of my fingers btw. We do a lot of special
: applications development (especially with rugged equipment), and thus we
: have a clean room, our own disk specialists, and a very good contact to most
: disk manufacturers. I often had conversations about low-level-format, and
: every disk specialist confirmed the experience I made with a good number of
: disks: a ll-format does not harm an SCSI disk that is healthy, it does not
: kill SCSI disks, and if a disk dies during a ll-format it for sure would
: have died under normal operation, too.

I don't want to start a usenet battle here but the above statement is just
wrong, especially the part about "if it dies during a ll-format it would of
dies under normal operations".

Thats bullshit.

I remember those 15150's at one point even came with a yellow peice of paper
in the drive bag that specifically said *NOT* to use any low-level format
utility on the drive, it wouldn't be covered under the warranty.

I agree with you that it should be able to handle a ll-format, but the point
is, there are probably millions of Seagate Hawk/Baracudas and whatever came
after them out there that *CAN'T* be ll-formatted.

The OP has a Hawk. It's 1GB. After 21 hours since executing the ll-format
the drive is toast. It's a Seagate, it's now a zombie. That drive could of
lasted another 10 years if he hadn't done that. It's a defect in the
firmware or whatever, but the point is, he shouldn't of done that.

The only problem here is the yellow peice of paper is long gone and he
didn't know any better.

At least the good news is these days it's no great loss, probably could
replace it for $1. Probably a 9GB for $10. Likely to pay more in shipping
than the cost of the drive.

That is a blanket statement you made that just isn't true. ll-formatting
will make toast out of some drives, no matter what condition they are in.

-bruce
bje@ripco.com

Bruce Esquibel wrote:

> I don't want to start a usenet battle here but the above statement is
> just wrong, especially the part about "if it dies during a ll-format
> it would of dies under normal operations".
>
> Thats bullshit.

And this comes from exactly what experience? As I said, that isn't only my
opionion but also the opinion of engineers and specialists that work with
disk systems in clean rooms on a daily base, and I'm quite confident that
these people know something about hard disks...

> I remember those 15150's at one point even came with a yellow peice
> of paper in the drive bag that specifically said *NOT* to use any
> low-level format utility on the drive, it wouldn't be covered under
> the warranty.

Interesting, none of our ST15150's (mostly N/WC models) came with such a
paper, and even the documentation on seagate.com doesn't seem to know
anything about it:

http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/.../bymodelnumber

And I would imagine that such important remarks also would be written
somewhere, don´t You think?

But if You have a look on paragraph 5.2.2 (page 13) in the ST15150 Product
Manual (which btw is Rev. D, the latest revision for the ST15150) You'll see
the statement for the time the drive needs to do a ll-format. If it would
kill the drive as You say Seagate hardly would be able to tell You how long
it takes. Or look at 4.0 "Standard Features" (page 7) which mentiones
"flawed sector reallocation at format time". A feature that works with a
command that kills the disk drive? Oh, and lets not forget 4.2 in the manual
of a disk that You say it's manufacturer claims to get killed by a
ll-format:

"Standard OEM models are formatted to 512 bytes per block.
ST15150 drives have nine (9) spare sectors per cylinder and one (1) spare
cylinder per unit.
Formatted Unformatted
4,294 Mbytes 5,062 Mbytes
Users having the necessary equipment may modify the data block size
before issuing a format command to obtain different formatted capacities.
User-available capacity also depends on the spare reallocation scheme
selected. See the Mode Select command and the Format command in the
SCSI-2 Interface Product Manual (part number 77738479)."

Or paragraph 4.4 "Installation" (page 9):

"Formatting
- It is not necessary to low-level format this drive. The drive is shipped
from the factory low-level formatted in 512-byte sectors.
- Reformat the drive if:
a. You select a different sector size.
b. You select a different spare-sector allocation scheme."

Useless to say that none manual mentions any risk or exclusion of warranty
after a ll-format. So much to the supposed risk You're talking about.

Last week I sold 15 used IBM RS/6000's with ST-15150Ns 4GB drives. _All_ of
them have been ll-formatted before they went into the workstations and
received a fresh installation of IBM AIX. Not a single one went bad after
the format. So it seems the disk manufacturer really is right about the
ability to do a ll-format, and You're wrong.

> I agree with you that it should be able to handle a ll-format, but
> the point is, there are probably millions of Seagate Hawk/Baracudas
> and whatever came after them out there that *CAN'T* be ll-formatted.

As the manufacturer manuals (and I think at least the maufacturer should
know it, don't You think?) state that that's nonsense...

> The OP has a Hawk. It's 1GB. After 21 hours since executing the
> ll-format the drive is toast. It's a Seagate, it's now a zombie. That
> drive could of lasted another 10 years if he hadn't done that.

And this assumption is based on what? Without knowing the exact condition of
his disk drive this is just a wild guess. Of course a 1GB disk _can_ last
another 10 years. But chance is much higher that it doesn't. So You know
under what conditions the drive has been used during the last 10 years? You
know that the drive hasn't been under continuous operation? How many
start-/stop-cycles the drive experienced? You are 100% sure that the drive
never ever has been moved when running? You definitely know the surface has
no excessive errors after 10year? That the heads are ok? How can You be so
sure if even the original poster doesn't know anything about the drives
former life?

Or is Your assumption just based on the fact that there are still any drives
running so it must be the case for the posters' disk? Did You ever think of
it that there might be a reason the drive has being trashed? Certainly not
because it has to be the fault of a ll-format no matter about the
circumstances. But I assume You have some real proof that ll-formats kill
drives? A manufacturers' statement or anything from a similar reliable
source...

> It's a
> defect in the firmware or whatever, but the point is, he shouldn't of
> done that.

As proven above You're wrong...

> The only problem here is the yellow peice of paper is long gone and he
> didn't know any better.

No, he made the right step that is necessary to verify if a disk drive is
still reputable or not. And he just found out that there indeed was a reason
this drive was supposed to be trashed...

> At least the good news is these days it's no great loss, probably
> could replace it for $1. Probably a 9GB for $10. Likely to pay more
> in shipping than the cost of the drive.
>
> That is a blanket statement you made that just isn't true.
> ll-formatting will make toast out of some drives, no matter what
> condition they are in.

Sorry, but that's BS. Of course You are free to believe anything You want,
but fact is that a ll-format does _not_ kill a healthy drive. If a drive is
healthy it has no problem with a ll-format, and if it dies during a
ll-format ist for sure would also have died under normal operation. And this
is not a guess, it simply is a fact...

Benjamin