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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!newshost.marcam.com!uunet!spcuna!spcvxb!terry
From: terry@spcvxb.spc.edu (Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr.)
Subject: Re: Seagate 4GB Barracuda Geometry?
Nntp-Posting-Host: spcvxa.spc.edu
References: <D4vE6t.7xr@poly.edu>
Sender: news@spcuna.spc.edu (Network News)
Organization: St. Peter's College, US
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 1995 09:07:13 GMT
Message-ID: <1995Mar4.040713.1@spcvxb.spc.edu>
Lines: 31
In article <D4vE6t.7xr@poly.edu>, eileen@photon.poly.edu (Eileen Tronolone) writes:
> I have seen a lot of people asking on the Sun groups about this drive
> (the ST 15150N). We have one that we're trying to format for BSDI 2.0
> with no success. One format ran for three days, seemed to work, then
> dumped core during the install. This last one was the only one we had
> any success with, which we got at http://www.lbl.gov/ctl/scsi/Seagate.
You shouldn't need to format a SCSI drive - in fact, depending on the
drive, formatting may be harmful (it may purge the grown defect list).
Perhaps you didn't mean formatting, though.
To paraphrase the Borg, "geometry is irrelevant". Most modern high-
capacity drives are zone recorded, meaning the number of sectors per
track varies depending on the track number you're on. All the driver
should need to know is the total number of user-accessible blocks on the
drive.
BSD/OS V2 uses a geometry of 1 head, 2048 sectors/track to create vir-
tual cylinders of 1MB. If you don't have an existing disklabel, just
select "probe" during setup and you should be all set. If you do have a
label, you can wipe it by doing a "disklabel -W sdN" followed by a "cp
/dev/zero /dev/rsdNc". Of course, this will wipe out any user data on the
disk. Once you do that you can select probe and you should be all set.
It's possible you have a defective/old drive/controller or firmware, or
bad cables or any one of a number of other things. Nothing should run for
3 days, though - sounds like a hung SCSI bus.
Terry Kennedy Operations Manager, Academic Computing
terry@spcvxa.spc.edu St. Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ USA
+1 201 915 9381 (voice) +1 201 435-3662 (FAX)