[comp.periphs.scsi] Need help formatting Fujitsu M2613SA

sisul@ppgbms (Jim Sisul) (08/28/90)

We are having problems formatting a hard drive, and were wondering if anyone
else might have seen the same behavior.  Here is our hardware setup:

    Standalone Sparcstation 1+ (SunOS 4.1) running off of factory installed,
    initialized Quantum ProDrive (internal) as sd0.

    Fujitsu M2613SA (sd2) in a external SCSI adapter/box

We cannot get the Fujitsu to format properly.  We are trying the following 
configuration, running "format"  as root (having booted from the primary
sd0, running in multiuser mode):

    1296 Cylinders
    2 Alternates
    1298 Physical Cylinders
    6 Heads
    34 Sectors/Track
    3490 RPM
    (These parameters were the recommendation of our 3rd party supplier)

After extracting and committing the original defect list, and labeling the 
drive, executing the format command results in the following errors:

    Block 264588 (1297/0/0), Fatal non-media error (illegal request)
    Warning:  error writing backup label
    sd2:  Error for command 'write'
          Error Level:  Fatal     Block: 264592
          Sense Key:  Illegal Request

This error message is repeated for every head and track on cylinder 1297.
Occasionally these errors occur during labeling, but labeling usually 
succeeds and we can go on to formatting, which always fails.

The failures always occur on the first cylinder past the last one we 
set in our configuration, whether it's 1296 cylinders or even as low as 
1280.

The Fujitsu manual specs the drive as having 6 heads, 34 blocks/track
(512 bytes/block), 3490 RPM, 1334 cylnders, 6 tracks/cylnder,
29,571 BPI recording density, 1681 TPI track density.

Is there some formula for determining ncyl/pcyl based on what the
disk manufacturer specifies as the number of actual cylnders?
How many cylnders are allocated at the end of the disk for defect
info, superblock backup, etc.?  How many alt cylinders are needed?

We appreciate your help.
 ___________________________________________________________________
|Regards,                           PPG Biomedical Systems          |
|Jim Sisul                          One Campus Drive                |
|914-741-4685                       Pleasantville, NY. 10570        |
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