🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi,
   I hope all you scsi gurus out there can give me some idea on this one.
Long explanation follows, please bare with me if you can.

Recently I came to be in possession of a Maxtor 1.2 Gb SCSI 2 drive.  The
original owner had decided that it was beyond salvagable condition and I
was lucky enough to intercept it on its way to the trash.  Anyhow the drive is
only about a year old and was used in a DEC machine of some sort.

I rushed straight home that day and plugged it into my Linux box equipped
with a Buslogic SCSI controller.  I held my breath as it booted up, only to
see to my great dismay the following error.  The only other device on the
SCSI bus is a Conner 121 Mb drive on id 1 which is terminated and works
perfectly.  I set the Maxtor to SCSI id 2.  Anyway here is the relevent
kernel output at boot time.

----------
scsi: ***** BusLogic SCSI Driver Version 2.0.6 of 17 July 1996
***** scsi: Copyright 1995 by Leonard N. Zubkoff <lnz@dandelion.com>
scsi0:Configuring BusLogic Model BT-542BH ISA SCSI Host Adapter
scsi0: Firmware Version: 3.31, I/O Address: 0x330, IRQ Channel: 11/Edge
scsi0: DMA Channel: 5, BIOS Address: 0xDC000, Host Adapter SCSI ID: 7
scsi0: Scatter/Gather Limit: 128 of 8192 segments, Parity Checking: Enabled
scsi0: Synchronous Initiation:Enabled, Extended Disk Translation: Enabled
scsi0: Disconnect/Reconnect:Enabled, Tagged Queuing: Disabled
scsi0: Total Queue Depth: 30, Mailboxes: 255, Initial CCBs: 64
scsi0: Tagged Queue Depth: 2, Untagged Queue Depth: 2
scsi0: Error Recovery Strategy: Default
scsi0: *** BusLogic BT-542BH Initialized Successfully ***
scsi0: Target 1: Synchronous at 2.50
mega-transfers/second, offset 8 scsi0: Target 2: Synchronous at 3.13
mega-transfers/second, offset 15 scsi0 : BusLogic BT-542BH scsi : 1 host.
Started kswapd v 1.4.2.2
  Vendor: CONNER Model: CP30100-121mb   Rev: 4040
  Type: Direct-Access                   ANSI SCSI revision: 01 CCS
Detected scsi disk sda atscsi0, channel 0, id 1, lun 0
  Vendor: MAXTOR Model: MXT-1240S       Rev: I1.2
  Type: Direct-Access                   ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Detected scsi disk sdb at scsi0, channel 0, id 2, lun 0
scsi : detected 2 SCSI disks total.
SCSI device sda: hdwr sector= 512 bytes. Sectors= 237705 [116 MB] [0.1 GB]
SCSI device sdb: hdwr sector= 512 bytes. Sectors= 2423457 [1183 MB] [1.2
GB]
Partition check:
 sda: sda1
 sdb:scsi0: MEDIUM ERROR on channel 0, id 2, lun 0, CDB: Read (6) 00 00 00 02 00
extra data not valid Current error sr08:10: sense key Medium Error
Additional sense indicates Medium format corrupted
scsidisk I/O error: dev 08:10, sector 0
 unable to read partition table
 hda: hda1 < hda5 hda6 hda7 hda8 hda9 > hda2 hda3
 hdb: hdb1 hdb2 hdb3
 hdd: hdd1

------------

I am fairly new to SCSI having only got the controller and the Conner drive
a few weeks earlier also from the trash at the same place.  But I have gone
through a few FAQ's and done extensive searches on the web only to be still
clueless on what to do about this problem.  I have obtained the jumper
setting on the drive and tried different id's, positions on the bus etc
with the same result. I am pretty sure though it is not a configuration
error on my part as the SCSI card seems to detect it ok.

When I go to fdisk the drive with 'fdisk /dev/sdb' the resulting error
reads 'Unable to read /dev/sdb'.  I have tried the scsiinfo program for
Linux which can successfully query the drive and read the Cache Control
Page, Control Mode Page, Format Device Page etc.  But if I go to obtain
Disk Drive Geometry Overview it fails.  During all instances I can see the
drive is being accessed as the read light comes on for brief periods .  I
have tried the drive on a Mac, and two PC's with PCI SCSI.  On one with a
Adaptec 2940 the SCSI card BIOS gave a hardware failure of some sort.  On
the other(AdvanSys) I got as far a starting a low level format but that
seemed to hang the system with no drive access being observed.  I have also
tried it under DOS using fdisk and driver supplied from BusLogic with no
luck.

I know my chances are not good, given that there is a strong possibility
that there is a physical surface error on the drive.  But the more I try
the more determined I become to get the damn thing to work.

Can anyone decipher the CDB(Command Descriptor Block) output and what it
means?  Or is that what the sense key error states? I suspect that the area
of the disk where the partition table/drive geometry information is kept is
probably corrupted ie track 0.  If so is there any way to relocate this to
a different area on the disk and add track 0 to the media defect list? My
controller doesn't have a fancy BIOS you can do formats with like the PCI
cards, it's all jumper controlled, so my options right not are rather
limited.  But at this stage I would be willing to try just about anything.
Does a program exist that lets you low level format a SCSI drive in
Linux/DOS? Sorry to rattle on for so long, but I thought anyone who was
thinking of responding should know what I have tried so far.  Is this drive
any better than a fancy doorstop?

Any help extremely appreciated.

Thanks

Tony            


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