Preparation Tips for Hard Drives and NetWare 286 2.1x By Mickey Applebaum Wasatch Education Systems/NetWire Sysop When you are considering the purchase of a computer for use as a NetWare file server you are faced with many decisions. One of the most important is what type of hard drive and controller to use. There are many different types of hard drives and controllers available today for the computer buyer to be aware of. The January/February issue of NetWare Connection discussed these different hard drive technologies as used by various NetWare versions. When you purchase the particular drive technology you want to use you'll want to know how to make the best use of it. This article explains how to prepare different drive types for use with NetWare 286 to get that best use. Preparing drives involves two steps: doing a low-level format and preparing a NetWare-readable drive identification stamp. For some drive types, this process also includes enabling some type of sector translation. Formatting Drives with Novell's COMPSURF Every version of 286-based NetWare includes a disk preparation utility called COMPSURF. This utility provides a disk format routine and a comprehensive surface analysis program. In early releases of NetWare, prior to 286 2.10, COMPSURF was the only way to prepare a drive for NetWare and ensure that all potentially damaged areas of the disk surface were locked out. Today's newer disk technologies, however, offer other alternatives. Now you should only use COMPSURF's format routine to format drives attached to a disk coprocessor board (DCB). The COMPSURF routine checks first for a BIOS-defined drive type and then for a DCB. If COMPSURF doesn't find the drive type or a DCB, it will revert to a basic low-level format routine that polls the disk for the number of cylinders, sectors, and heads and then formats all available cylinders. Small computer system interface (SCSI) drives, enhanced small disk interface (ESDI) drives, and integrated drive electronics (IDE) drives embed specific information on protected tracks on the disk. Running COMPSURF on these drives can result in anything from inconvenient problems to physical damage to the drive itself. Because COMPSURF does not recognize that certain data must be maintained on the protected tracks, it overwrites this data. The data contained on the protected tracks may be nothing more than the manufacturer's Bad Block table, or it could be as critical as the track skewing factors and internal translation algorithms. Track skewing is a technique where the low level format offsets the first sector of a track by at least one sector compared to the previous track. This allows the drive to read from track to track in a single continuous operation without having to wait for the disk to make a full revolution to get to the first sector on the next track. Translation algorithms are disk embedded sector translation formulas which the disk controller uses to enable sector translation. This is used to keep the drive's logical number of sectors below the DOS compatible partition limit of 1024 cylinders. Early signs of problems were seen on the IBM PS/2 ESDI drives when COMPSURF erased the IBM manufacturer's ID stamp and the system's REFERENCE disk could not identify the drive type. Formatting Drives with Third-Party Utilities To avoid these problems, you should use the utilities provided with the computer, the drive, or the host/controller to low-level format your hard drives. For drives that are provided with value- added disk drives (VADDs) as part of the utilities (such as the Storage Dimensions LANStor drives), using these low-level programs produces a NetWare-ready stamp, and no further disk preparation work is needed. On other disks, such as ESDI drives attached to Western Digital's 1007 controller, you may need to run COMPSURF to stamp the disk NetWare ready. To prepare hard drives attached to standard AT-type disk controllers, you must access the disk preparation utility. Most drives are provided with Disk Manager from On-Track or SpeedStor from Storage Dimensions. You can use these utilities to do the low-level format and surface analysis. Then run COMPSURF on the drive. Answer "No" or "0" to the menu choices until COMPSURF prompts you to confirm the previous answers. Answer "Yes" to invoke the track 0 test and provide the disk with a NetWare- readable Bad Block table and ID stamp. This process will work with any standard AT-type disk controller that uses a BIOS drive type identifier. Some of the newer AT disk controllers do not use the Industry Standards Association disk controller (ISADISK) command set or have different register functions. These controllers make it difficult to prepare the drive for NetWare. Preparing ESDI Drives The new ESDI sector translation controllers, which emulate an AT- type controller, must be prepared in a slightly different fashion. To prepare the drive with the low-level format and surface analysis options from the controller's BIOS formatter routine, you use the DEBUG program from DOS. If you are using a Western Digital 1007V controller and the default memory address jumper setting, you would invoke the formatter by issuing the following command at the DEBUG program's prompt ( - ): G=CC00:5 Details on preparing a drive with the Western Digital 1007V ESDI controller are available on NetWire in the WD1007.TXT file (Available in the data libraries on NetWire's NOVA forum). The concepts explained in this file apply to any ESDI controller that emulates a standard AT-type controller using the ISADISK drivers. After completing the low-level format and surface tests, you must run COMPSURF. Answer "No" or "0" to all of the menu choices until COMPSURF prompts you if the chosen parameters are correct. Answer "Yes" to invoke the track 0 test option, which creates a NetWare- readable Bad Block table and puts a NetWare ID stamp on the drive. Some drives are exceptions: ESDI controllers that use VADDs to operate in a NetWare environment include the CORE ESDI drives and the Storage Dimensions LAN E series drives. The Adaptec 2322b controller has some limitations in its sector translation abilities. Patches developed to circumvent the problems are available on NetWire (see the 2322.TXT and 2322PT.ARC files in data library 14 on NOVA). Preparing SCSI drives not attached to a DCB is the same as preparing ESDI drives, except that most SCSI host adapters do not invoke sector translation because their VADDs usually deal with the NetWare interface. Low-level functions for each SCSI drive are defined differently, but most are invoked through a software utility. Again, the need to run COMPSURF to provide a NetWare ID stamp depends on the preparation utility used. SCSI drives attached to a Novell/ADIC DCB require slightly different preparation. Manufacturers usually low-level format these drives. Some manufacturers also format and surface test SCSI hard drives for use with a DCB. If the instructions for your drive specify that you do not need to run COMPSURF, do not complete the following instructions. If your drive has not been set to interface with a DCB, the first step is to ensure that the drive is jumpered to disable parity and to enable internal termination power. If these are not set correctly, you may receive the message that the COMPSURF and NETGEN utilities could not find any drives. The next step is to run COMPSURF's surface analysis routine. In this case, you would select the option to format the hard disk. However, do not retain the Bad Block table, nor manually enter the bad block information. Then set the program to do one sequential surface test and the default number of I/O tests. You can specify additional surface or I/O tests, but it is time consuming. Formatting IDE Drives IDE drives, the latest technology in hard drives today, require special care and handling for use with NetWare. Mistakes can either reduce the capacity available or permanently damage the drive. Like SCSI drives, IDE drives have embedded controllers and information specific to that drive on protected tracks. IDE drives are also similar to ESDI drives: both drives have a level of sector translation built into their controllers. Because you use the standard ISADISK driver with these drives, you must use a BIOS drive table definition, which can severely limit the drive's usable capacity. Some drives now have more than 200MG available, but with the limitations of BIOS drive types, only 115MG can be defined. Due to these limitations in using IDE drives, some companies have produced preparation programs that can specifically handle the IDE drives in a NetWare environment. The most popular program is Disk Manager -N from On-Track Computer Systems, Inc. This program patches the NetWare disk drivers with the specific information about the drives so that NetWare can use disk's complete capacity. Disk Manager -N provides the drive ID stamp for NetWare and performs the comprehensive surface tests. Disk Manager -N can also patch ELS NetWare drivers for use with IDE and ESDI, as well as other nonstandard Industry Standards Association (ISA) channel disk drives. Manufacturers low-level format IDE drives. No routines are included to do a low-level format at a later date because track skewing and disk sectoring information must be stored directly on the disk. The manufacturers' intensive testing makes producing portable software to format the disk infeasible. As a result, running a program that does a low-level format on the drive, such as COMPSURF, could cause severe and permanent damage to this data, making the drive unrecognizable by its controller. Formatting IBM PS/2 Computers The disk preparation guidelines for IBM PS/2 computers are consistent among the PS/2 line regardless of whether you have the modified frequency modulation (MFM), ESDI, or new SCSI disk interfaces. Since the PS/2 computers use the drive to store information, this data must be maintained so the system will recognize the disk when Advanced Diagnostics or other REFERENCE disk utilities are run. To maintain this information, you should only use the REFERENCE disk's Advanced Diagnostics utilities to low-level format drives attached to a PS/2 disk interface. To access the Advanced Diagnostics menu, boot the computer with the working copy of the appropriate REFERENCE disk. When the main menu appears, press Control A. You will then have the option of doing the disk low-level format. This is one of the two available menu choices in the Advanced Diagnostics menu. The computer will do a low-level format of the disk and a complete read/write surface verification. A protected track routine stores the bad track information directly on the disk. The Bad Block table is read when the computer is booted. This process can take up to 12 hours per disk, depending on the size and condition of the disk. After this process is completed, you can run COMPSURF'S track 0 test. To run the track 0 test, answer "No" or "0" to the menu choices until COMPSURF prompts you to confirm the previous answer. This will put the Bad Block table and a NetWare ID stamp on the disk. If you are using the PS/2 model 30 as a file server and have installed a Seagate drive, you may have to use the M30PAT.ZIP patch from data library 8 on NOVA in NetWire. If your hard drive's primary identification marker has been removed by COMPSURF and you want to redo the low-level format, you will need to download the file FMTPS2.ARC from data library 8 on NOVA in NetWire. This file restores the primary defect list and rebuilds the protected track drive information. So, as you can see, there is no limit to the type of drive you can use with NetWare given the proper driver and a correct format procedure. This will allow you to have years of safe reliable operation from your file server's hard disk with the least amount of trouble.