SUMMARY: Problem formatting Elite 9 disk on SPARC 5.

From: Stephen Fitzgerald (sjf@mod.dsto.gov.au)
Date: Wed Jan 11 1995 - 05:47:26 CST


My original question is at the end of this message.

I received a number of useful reponses, however none could solve my problem
so I had to return the disk to the vendor. He tells me that they have had
problems with a few of these disks when the SCSI bus was longer than 30cm (?
seems a bit flaky). This was no good to me as the disk is to be added to a
server eventually. Therefore I sent it back.

One person suggested the use of scsiping - I had already tried that to get
my parameters for the format.

A couple of "I never had any problems but I did not try to format".

One person responded with his set of format parameters - I tried these with
no success.

One person suggested formatting on another platform - I wish I could but I
have no other boxes suitable for this.

Thanks to the following respondees -

<NCanning@wcs.co.uk> (Canning, Nigel)
B.King@ee.surrey.ac.uk
Mike Bennett <mikebe@pass.bt.co.uk>
vallejo@osg.emc.com (Luis Vallejo)
rwing!pat@ole.cdac.com (Pat Myrto)
david@orange.com

Regards

==========================================================================
Stephen Fitzgerald E-mail: sjf@mod.dsto.gov.au
Maritime Operations Division Phone : +61 8 259 5992
DSTO Salisbury, South Australia Fax : +61 8 259 5139

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Original question follows -

System : SPARC 5
OS : 5.3
Patches : 101788-01

I am having problems formatting an Elite 9 Seagate disk. It appears as though
I have trashed the format information on the new disk.

Formatting of the Elite 9 fails after the addition of the patch which is
supposed to allow this (101788-01). The disk comes up (in format -mM) as -

        15. SEAGATE ST410800N
        16. Elite-9
        17. something
        18. other
Specify disk type (enter its number): 15
selecting c0t0d0
Medium error during read
ASC: 0x31 ASCQ: 0x0
sense: 70 00 03 00 00 00 00 0a 00 00 00 00 31 00 01 00
        00 00
[disk unformatted]

At this stage I cannot format, label or do anything useful with the disk.

format (from within format -mM) command brings up the following error -

Formatting...

Mode sense page 0x4 (default):
header: 23 00 10 08 00 ff ff ff 00 00 02 00
data: 84 16 00 13 3e 1b 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
        00 00 00 00 15 18 00 00
       pcyl: 4926
      heads: 27
        rpm: 5400
format_time: 124 minutes
format_timeout set to 14880 seconds, 14880 required
Hardware error during format: block 37035 (0x90ab) (10/8/61)
ASC: 0x3 ASCQ: 0x0
sense: f0 00 04 00 00 90 ab 0a 00 00 00 00 03 00 01 00
        00 00
 
Request sense valid: yes
Error class and code: 0x70
Segment number: 0
Filemark: no
End-of-medium: no
Incorrect length indicator: no
Sense key: 4
Information field: 0x00 0x00 0x90 0xab
Additional sense length: 10
Command-specific information: 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00
Additional sense code: 0x03 = 3
Additional sense code qualifier: 0x00 = 0
Field replaceable unit code: 1
Sense-key specific: 0x00 0x00 0x00
Format failed
 
Retry of formatting operation without any of the standard
mode selects and ignoring disk's Grown Defects list. The
disk may be able to be reformatted this way if an earlier
formatting operation was interrupted by a power failure or
SCSI bus reset. The Grown Defects list will be recreated
by format verification and surface analysis.
 
Retry format without mode selects and Grown Defects list? yes
Formatting...
format_timeout set to 14880 seconds, 0 required
Hardware error during format: block 37035 (0x90ab) (10/8/61)
ASC: 0x3 ASCQ: 0x0
sense: f0 00 04 00 00 90 ab 0a 00 00 00 00 03 00 01 00
        00 00
 
Request sense valid: yes
Error class and code: 0x70
Segment number: 0
Filemark: no
End-of-medium: no
Incorrect length indicator: no
Sense key: 4
Information field: 0x00 0x00 0x90 0xab
Additional sense length: 10
Command-specific information: 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00
Additional sense code: 0x03 = 3
Additional sense code qualifier: 0x00 = 0
Field replaceable unit code: 1
Sense-key specific: 0x00 0x00 0x00
 
failed
format>
 
The format.dat entry I have used is the one posted to sun-managers, i.e.
 

 
disk_type = "SEAGATE ST410800N" \
        : ctlr = SCSI : fmt_time = 18 \
        : trks_zone = 27 : asect = 9 \
        : ncyl = 4942 : acyl = 2 : pcyl = 4926 : nhead = 27 : nsect = 133 \
        : rpm = 5400 : bpt = 78204
 
partition = "SEAGATE ST410800N" \
        : disk = "SEAGATE ST410800N" : ctlr = SCSI \
        : 2 = 0, 17746722
 
 
Is there a low level format that I can run in order to recover this disk or
is it unusable?
 
Any and all help greatly appreciated.
 
I will post a summary.

Regards
Stephen Fitzgerald



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