English Amiga Board - View Single Post - Low level format a MFM HD on amiga KS 1.3

snowpile79 · 26 July 2021, 15:49

OK so I did go to the bombjack site and grab all the manuals. No mention of low level formatting in the manuals unfortunately. I did try the idea of the A2091 tools. The only tool able to do a low level format with the A2091 tools is the old old version of HDToolbox on the install disk. I did feed in the hddisk.device driver into HDToolbox but it seems to only support scsi or XTIDE not MFM. It scanned the scsi bus side of the A2090 so if I had old SCSI drives it likely would have worked but I have an MFM HD. I scoured aminet again for a tool. Theres this BHformat tool that claims to support low level format but it hinted at only supporting SCSI. I poked at it anyways and seemed like a dead end for sure.

It seems as if theres no low level format tools for the old MFM drives unless there is a secret to getting hddisk.device to work on the MFM side in the old old HDToolbox that comes on the A2091 install disks.

With that said I'll admit that I eventually pulled the Hard Disk out of the Amiga and low level formatted the drive in my XT PC on a WD hard disk controller. I could have used my bridgeboard I guess but thats in another amiga and if I was pulling the drive out I might as well just use the PC. The Low level format worked fine in the PC. All of the random bad cylinders were completely fixed by the low level format. The drive still has a section of 20 cylinders that totally went but luckily they are all in a row so I just create my partitions to avoid them. This miniscribe drive (the 3053 model) has a voice coil head and has a whole platter dedicated to head positioning (no stepper motor that wears out) so hopefully this drive will last even longer. The ole girl is happy again. Thanks for all the other ideas even if they didnt pan out. I guess Commodore in those early days didnt find it important for users to be able to low level format.

26 July 2021, 15:49	#5
snowpile79 Registered User Join Date: Jan 2018 Location: Hancock Posts: 48	OK so I did go to the bombjack site and grab all the manuals. No mention of low level formatting in the manuals unfortunately. I did try the idea of the A2091 tools. The only tool able to do a low level format with the A2091 tools is the old old version of HDToolbox on the install disk. I did feed in the hddisk.device driver into HDToolbox but it seems to only support scsi or XTIDE not MFM. It scanned the scsi bus side of the A2090 so if I had old SCSI drives it likely would have worked but I have an MFM HD. I scoured aminet again for a tool. Theres this BHformat tool that claims to support low level format but it hinted at only supporting SCSI. I poked at it anyways and seemed like a dead end for sure. It seems as if theres no low level format tools for the old MFM drives unless there is a secret to getting hddisk.device to work on the MFM side in the old old HDToolbox that comes on the A2091 install disks. With that said I'll admit that I eventually pulled the Hard Disk out of the Amiga and low level formatted the drive in my XT PC on a WD hard disk controller. I could have used my bridgeboard I guess but thats in another amiga and if I was pulling the drive out I might as well just use the PC. The Low level format worked fine in the PC. All of the random bad cylinders were completely fixed by the low level format. The drive still has a section of 20 cylinders that totally went but luckily they are all in a row so I just create my partitions to avoid them. This miniscribe drive (the 3053 model) has a voice coil head and has a whole platter dedicated to head positioning (no stepper motor that wears out) so hopefully this drive will last even longer. The ole girl is happy again. Thanks for all the other ideas even if they didnt pan out. I guess Commodore in those early days didnt find it important for users to be able to low level format.