How to erase a defect list?

[Karl-Heinz Herrmann]

Hallo Randy,

at least your firmware problems remind me of my Quantum disk (Saturn) which had
the L912 Firmware as well.
It always sent a queue full under heavy load which caused a hanging machine if
I had tagged queuing enabled. This error vanished as soon as I upgraded to the
L915 Firmware.  

>  Then things really went downhill, and here's where I am badly in need of
>  some help: I ran badblocks and mistakenly pointed it at /dev/sdb, rather
>  than /dev/sdb4. 
I used badblock on the whole disk (/dev/sda or sdb) without problems. I don't
think the badblock on sdb itself got the disk screwed up. 

>  I am now unable to access either the primary or grown defects lists.  I
>  have tried to format the disk using a) BIOS, b) the "DSP" DOS program from
>  Quantum, and c) the scsiformat command. 
Can you get *any* information from the disk with scsiinfo? Error Flag setting,
cache Information page, format info... (-e -c -f could be interesting)

>  So: HOW CAN I REINITIALIZE THIS INFORMATION????  I would like to erase the
>  grown defect list, and if possible return the primary defect list to its
>  pristine state.  This disk has not quite achieved "brick" status, but is now
>  perilously close.
I don't know of the primary list, but scsiformat has an option to erase the
grown defect list:

scsiformat [...]:
 c) Defect management
       -e     Erase  the  grown  defect list prior to formatting.
              You can issue new defects for the grown defect list
              nevertheless   and   media  certification  may  add
              defects too.

       -p     Ignore the vendor's primary defect  list.  This  is
              not recommended as the vendor probably had a reason
              to specify these primary defects.

       -c     Do not perform a media surface certification.  This
              may  speed  up  formatting  but  is also not recom
              mended.

       -s     Stop when unable to access primary or grown defects
              due  to  some  internal error in the target device.
              When not given, formatting continues but returns  a
              recovered error upon completion. (Which is probably
              not well supported by scsiformat).

I don't think you can change the manufacturer (primary) defect list. But
badblock shouldn't be able to do that as well. So you can try to use the -e
flag and hope for the best.  

What happenend when you tried to format the drive with scsiformat? 

If this is not helping you will have to wait for one of the wiser guys on the
list...

Hope the best,

Karl-Heinz

-----------------------------
Karl-Heinz Herrmann
E-Mail: k.-h.herrmann at fz-juelich.de
-----------------------------

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