Need Help with SCSI

[Kabrinski]

Found 2 older SCSI 4gb drives with a SCSI controller (LSI Logic 53C875/53C876). I am pretty sure that the drives work, as Windows can see them. Unable to format them so I can use them. They were pulled from an old G3, so they are formatted for Apple. I was told by a friend that I just need to low-level format and I should be able to use them. Anyone know if this is correct? And if so, what would be a good program to use to reformat?

 

[Uncle Bob]

as far as low level format is concerned; if the adapter concerned has a bios chip installed you should see a message displayed during post - showing BIOS date/version etc - with possibly a prompt to press <F2> or <F6> to access the configuration utilities. One of the utilities is low-level format;

However, if the scsi adapter you are using does feature a bios; you should be able to access/format the drive using FDISK or similar; Otherwise you need to have drivers installed for the OS (if the card does not have a bios rom, any devices attached will not be bootable) and these should allow you to use the OS utilities to format the drive

hth

 

[Steve]

LSI cards let you access their BIOS with Ctrl+C at startup. In there, you can do a low-level format. Then boot into Windows and partition and format the drives in Disk Management.

 

[Kabrinski]

Thanks guys. I actually tried something else and was able to do it. I installed a different driver from the manufactorer (one that was for Win2k) and I was able to partition and format in Windows. I appreciate the advice though. I will keep everything in mind in case I run across other drives and/or cards.