>OK, all seems well as it booted on the 80M. Next I decide to reformat
>the 80 with Apples HDSC setup formatter and it has no problem,(booted
>from the Dock's drive of course). Then I do a normal complete install of
>7.5 onto the 80M but after it is mostly done it hangs. So, try to
>install again....hangs again. So try to reformat again....won't do it.
>Says problem with disk. Run Norton Disk Doctor...lots of bad sectors.
>Quit Norton (can't fix anything), and now drive won't even mount. I
>tried Disk First Aid, Norton, FWD Toolkit, HD SC setup, "Mt. Everything"
>and nothing can find it. In fact now, the computer will not boot even
>off the floppy (in the Dock) or the Dock's HD. I have to remove the 80M
>to even boot the computer.
It sounds as if the drive had a large number of bad sectors,
including some near the beginning of the disk where the partition map
and/or driver partition would reside. These were probably mapped out
by the drive previously and added to the "grown defect list" that's
maintained by any SCSI drive so they wouldn't be re-used (replacement
sectors are allocated for each bad one from a pool of fixed size, set
aside when the drive was manufactured). Unfortunately the grown
defect list can be erased when the drive is reformatted, and it
sounds like Apple HDSC Setup did that (the list is called "grown" to
distinguish it from another defect list that contains all the sectors
that were bad on the drive as manufactured, ie. when the SCSI board
was first attached - that one can't be erased). Some formatters like
to do that on the theory that the sectors weren't really all that
bad, only the low-level formatting information had been lost.
You might try formatting the disk with a third-party tool like FWB
Hard Disk Toolkit (the old version 1.8s would be good for that model
of Duo). It can keep the grown defect list between formats, so
several attempts at a format with bad sector detection turned on
might map them out again. If the sectors went bad during some
discrete event (a head crash from an impact for instance), it might
continue working ok for some time. On the other hand, if it's just so
old that sectors are dropping out left and right, it's probably not
worth putting any data on. You can tell to an extent by watching what
sectors get mapped out during the FWB formatter runs: if they're all
in a group it was a head crash, if they're scattered everywhere the
disk is just too old.
>Long story short...yeah right.... I have had very similar problems with
>two other "used" SCSI drives in the past. One a 2.5 inch the other a 3.5
>inch. They all worked at first but got progressively worse the more I
>fiddled with them, till they got to the point they won't even mount! Is
>this a stroke of bad luck or do I mess around where I ought not? Any
>advice will be appreciated.
The grown list is supposed to get sectors added slowly over time, so
the drives' former owners may not have even known about the problem,
if they hadn't ever done a new low-level format. The real issue would
be if the Apple HDSC Setup program really erases the list, which just
isn't a good idea. It's possible that Drive Setup doesn't, so that
might be another thing to try (and you can use it instead on a 68k
Mac). I'd vote for the FWB tool if you can get it, though.
It's also possible that bad logical blocks were mapped out at a level
above the drive firmware itself (by a driver, for instance) - in
which case the owner may have known - but this isn't too likely for a
SCSI drive.
As for messing around where you oughtn't, Mac users do tend in the
habit of reformatting drives WAY too often. It's almost never
necessary to do a low-level format of a drive, and barely ever
necessary even to erase a filesystem. It's just one of those
wave-a-chicken cures that people resort to, like rebuilding the
Desktop database or zapping the PRAM without really checking out what
the problem is. If I wanted to reformat and reinstall to fix every
problem I'd be running Windows. ;) I do understand why you wanted to
do this with a drive you'd bought used, but I wouldn't have bothered
(or if I did I'd be sure to use the FWB tool and keep the grown
defect list).
--
Marc Sira | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"If you can't play with words, what good are they?"
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