Low Level formating of SCSI drives

[Cirvam]

I recently accquired a bunch of 1 to 2 gb scsi drives and when I install them with another drive that has an os on they don't show up. Under Windows they just don't exist and under linux they are reconized but when I try to fdisk or mke2fs them it says device not found or somthing along those lines. However when it is booting up the drive is assigned /dev/sdb and it shows the correct type of drive. What's my problem? Do I just need to low level format them or are they compleatly bad?

 

[AndyBo]

Can you run fdisk against the drive? ("fdisk /sdb&quot Try using that to partition the drive, and then create some filesystems using "mkfs".

 

[Cirvam]

When I run fdisk I get a error message about not being able to find the drive. I know I have the right sd(x) drive.

 

[MikeLacey]

What about Partition Magic or FIPS? Can they see it?

 

[AndyBo]

It's starting to sound like a physical problem. You've said that even though you get /dev/sdb messages appearing under Linux, the drives can't be seen under Windows. There's a few things you can check.

* Are the drives connected correctly? ie, are all cables firmly seated? If they appear to be seated OK, reseat them, just in case.

* Is the SCSI chain terminated in the correct place?

* Does each drive have a unique SCSI ID?

* Is the SCSI card you are using supported by Linux?

* Is the SCSI card BIOS set up correctly for the drives you are using?

If all of the above appear to be OK, I would go right back to basics. Remove each of the SCSI drives and boot the system - make sure everything looks OK. Then start to add each drive one by one, remembering to keep the SCSI chain terminated correctly.

Hope this helps.

 

[Cirvam]

ok I don't know about partion magic because I don't have a copy and I haven't tried fips yet.

all the cables are ok and I have tried diffrent cables and I have tried them in several diffrent machines.
The chain is terminated allright. Each drive has a unique id. The other drives I have tried have all shown up in Linux and when I do a dmesg all the drives show up including the bad one. I don't know much about the SCSI bios thing, I have tried them in a Compaq prolient and a IBM PS/2 with diffrent scsi cards for each and it doesn't make a diffrence. I know what drives it is and I have tried it with just one know good drive and then one bad drive and it doesn't show up een though the cable is ok and everything is ok.

I have read some stuff about low level formating and I downloaded a IBM program but it doesn't see the drive either

 

[AndyBo]

Where did you get the disks from? Also, are some of the drives that you received working, while others are not working? If they're "hand-me-down" drives that you've been given, it might be that some of them are broken. That the problem moves with the drives also seems to indicate this. If the price was right (ie, free), trash them and move on. For the value of the time you spend trying to fix them you could probably go out and get a new drive ;^)

 

[warmongr]

Do you get any messages in /var/log/messages that indicate a problem with your SCSI devices?

Just my 2 cents?
war... [sig][/sig]

 

[Cirvam]

I got the drive at a auction for a small price (I think And some that I got work and some don't, however when selling I think they just said that they just needed formated or somthing to that effect

I'll check /var/log/messages next time I get around to them [sig]<p> Erik<br><a href=mailto:cirvam@netzero.net>cirvam@netzero.net</a><br><a href= > </a><br>Looking to learn more about Linux, Apache, PHP and others.[/sig]