Miniscribe LLF

[techknight]

Is there any way to re low-level-format a stepper 20mb miniscribe? i have one pulled from a macintosh SE and its giving me fits. of course.

it works perfectly fine, and seeks all the data on the drive properly. it was also bootable.

Problem is, when i tried to erase disk, it froze. stepper actuated one time and that was it. norton wipe info does the same thing. of course it damages the volume, so if i ran a norton disk doctor, it successfully repairs the volume so i can see the files, but obviously there is some crosslinks, corrupt files and is no longer bootable but it still seeks fine.

I tried the HD SC setup on a power PC mac and it freezes as well....

any way to low level format these drives? I am thinking it needs a new format.

 

[H3NRY]

Model number?

Some drives like the early Conner SCSIs didn't support low level format by the user, since they had a system of assigning spare sectors for failing ones. Problem is, when all the spares are used up... and some just plain didn't work. There are some very advanced SCSI utilities which will permit you to roll your own non-standard commands and read the drive's response. One such is Siverlining, another is the SCSI Utility which can be found on some Mac developer CDs. Conner drives could only be formatted at the factory. Perhaps your Miniscribe is the same, though my memory is that they could be formatted in the field.

If the drive has been banged and the heads slapped the disk hard enough to dent it, the low level format is simply failing.

 

[techknight]

na the drive hasnt been slammed as i am aware of.

its a stepper motor drive. its a miniscribe 8425S? i forget. gotta tear it back apart and look. came from an SE