Peter said:
{How do you do that, BTW?}
That's fine for SCSI drives.
Peter, I do hope you know there are utilities out there to Low-Level
format IDE drives, as well? You don't need to have SCSI drives to be
able to scrub them squeaky clean; and in a world of increasing viral
attacks, people should educate themselves on this issue. For whatever
reason, periodically it is just a good idea to scrub your drives. As I
mentioned previously, NO virus, worm, trojan, or other nasty can survive
a Low-Level format. The Low-Level format takes your hard drive down to
the condition it was in when it left the factory (this, from IBM and
Seagate technicians, independent of one another). From the Maxtor PDF:
LOW LEVEL FORMAT, Quick or Full Test:
!! Warning!! These tests are data destructive, all user information on
the hard drive is removed. Maxtor recommends you backup all critical
data and remove other hard drives before performing this test. Perform
this test only if all other tests have passed (or by direction of Maxtor
Technical Support) but the hard drive is still not performing correctly.
.. . . The full LLF overwrites a pattern of zeros to all sectors on the
drive. High capacity hard drives take longer to complete. Allow
sufficient time to complete the test. Several hours to overnight may be
needed. A full Low Level Format remains the most effective test for a
drive with intermittent problems.
Every hard drive manufacturer has their own little utility; they are a
free download; they are small enough to fit on floppy(ies); and they run
as a BOOT option, SEPARATE from Windows. They have (increasingly)
lovely little GUI's -- these aren't ugly black-screen DOS command-line
utilities, but full-color little programs, mouse enabled, VERY user
friendly, and usually with extensive Help. They offer a Quick LLF or a
Full LLF. ALWAYS do the Full LLF, since virii can infect your MBS
(Master Boot Sector), and a Quick LLF will not reach that far back. I
can't emphasize enough how important this is. My 181 GB Seagate Full
LLFs in about 4 hours.
These little programs are also, uh, smart heh heh: They sniff your
drives and can frequently tell if you're using their utility on someone
ELSE's brand; so be prepared to hunt down the one specific to your mfg
if you don't want to invite an automatic reboot.
Although I have three different brands of hard drives in my P6DGU, I
_hugely_ prefer both the GUI and the reliability of the IBM / HITACHI
utility, called Drive Fitness Test. Both Maxtor and Seagate have
Caldera-based utilities and are neither as reliable (Powermax),
forgiving (Seagate), or features rich. Here are some links. I highly
recommend you burn their ISO version to a CD for a much more pleasant
experience.
___________________________________________________
For **ANY** HARD DRIVE (not just IBM / HITACHI) I highly recommend you use
DRIVE FITNESS TEST \ Erase Disk
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm
___________________________________________________
If you want to use SEAGATE's utility, be prepared to have at least _1_
SEAGATE drive cabled or you Do Not Pass Go, you Do Not Collect $200, and
you Do Not even get to launch the program. You'll say in a DOS screen
with a rude instruction to CNTL+ALT+DEL and no further explanation. If
you are permitted to access the program, you'll find a lovely interface;
but . . . meh. I still prefer IBM's DFT and 16 colors is good 'nuff for
me.
DISCWIZARD
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz.html
___________________________________________________
MAXTOR has two utilities. The basic one is called MaxBlast, and I
haven't tested it because I used the ISO Powermax version. I have never
gotten this utility to work, not once. Not only is the interface ugly,
a 90-second test HANGS, and there is a paucity of data. Perhaps
MaxBlast works better.
POWERMAX \ Low Level Format
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/powermax.htm
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/maxblast3.htm
___________________________________________________
And lastly, Ultimate Boot CD also has a nice portal (typically
maintained and up-to-date) on HDD mfg utility links at
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com
There is nothing interesting in that PDF, at least from your original
problem perspective.
My toner cartridge thanks you Peter lol.
(my eyes, too)
And I advise to leave cables properly attached, right from the beginning.
I see.
I was thinking about this last night from a purely logical perspective,
and have to say I'm leaning toward doing that only because neither
option worked previously ANYWAY. Well, if neither option worked
previously, a fully-cabled Setup option has as much of a chance at
success as a repeat-CABLE/REBOOT option; and if I don't try it now, I'll
never know if it would have worked.
One thing will be different this time (well, many things really, since I
am armed with literature and hefty DOS utilities): I will, as before,
low-level format all four of the drives first, to remove any ghost of a
previous MBR, NTLDR, BOOT.INI, or anything else that may have been left
from prior attempts; but when I run Setup, I am going to NTFS —>only the
one IBM (18 GB) C:\ drive<— and leave the other 3 drives in their
nascent low-level formatted state . . . to be NTFS'd as Basic drives
from within Windows 2000.
Either way I'll report back on the system for the benefit of others who
might suffer this same process, and want to know what my results were.
Angel
