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- FORMATTING LEADING EDGE MODEL D HARDDISKS
-
- Some of the early 20M Leading Edge Model Ds were delivered with
- improperly formatted 20Meg Harddisks and a defective format program. The
- fault stemmed from the PREPARE program on the LE diagnostics diskette which
- formatted the 10Meg harddisk fine, but bombed out on the 20Meg HD. You may have
- this problem if you are experiencing read errors and your harddisk flunks the
- LE diagnostics. Also, if you run the Norton utilities DT.COM disk test
- program, you'll find about half the disk from about cluster 5000 on is
- unreadable. Do not run the prepare program to reformat. This probably caused
- the problem in the first place. Choice is to go back to the dealer and have
- him reformat, or follow the simple procedure below.
-
- Format process is three stage...a low level format using debug, fdisk to set
- the dos partition, and format to do a high level format.
-
- 1. Low Level Format...Boot the system using the DOS disk in the A drive. Type
- debug. At the - prompt, type: g=c800:ccc You should get a message something
- like Adaptec format program. If no message, do not proceed. Respond with the
- values below to the listed prompts...add a return where necessary. Interleaf
- factor 3 Drive ID 0 Defect n Default Params n Logic Unit 1 Step Rate 3
- Landing Zone 0 ECC Correction 8 Write Precomp 265 Reduce Write 265 Heads 4
- Amt Cyls Used 264 You should get a message that disk is being formatted. If
- no, try again. Sometimes takes 2 or 3 attempts. If you do get a formatting
- message, it will take a while. You should get a completion message and
- instructions to hit control break. Do so. Quit from debug with q...if this
- doesn't work, just control alt delete.
-
- 2. Once back on the A drive, type fdisk, and follow instructions to set up
- dos partition on c drive. 3. Once finished with fdisk, from A drive type
- format c:/s This will complete the process, formatting your hard disk, and
- transferring a copy of DOS to the c drive. Go to C and do a directory. Should
- be command.com and two hidden files. Remove DOS disk from A drive and try
- booting from C. Check the HD with the LE Diagnostics or the norton DT.COM
- program. You're finished. This process worked on three of our LE Ds at work,
- and my own personal machine at home. Hope you find it useful.
-
- DAVID JACOBSON 5/13/86, minor revisions 11/1/87