Louis,
The only way I know of to destroy hard drives in pairs (without using a
sledgehammer or similar, but that's cheating) is to put them on
different channels of a cmd640_vlb IDE interface chip and not tell the
IDE driver it's there. Usually when that happens, you can not write the
hd, but you can format it using the format track command. I don't know
of a standard linux utility to do that. I have one I developed, but it
hasn't really been tested, 'coz I don't have any spare hard drives. :-).
If that is what has happened, msdos format should fix it, I think, or my
hdformat program with associated kernel patches.
Maybe your friend should have a read of
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/ide.txt.
I had it happen to me once, before I did read it, but I was able to
format the drives and start over. One I still use, the other was
stolen. It's not really a linux problem, but if linux knows about the
broken hardware is there it can prevent it from doing any damage.
Lawson
>< Microsoft free environment
This mail client runs on Wine. Your mileage may vary.
On Sun, 15 Aug 1999, Louis Dupree wrote:
> A friend on mine said he has had two Maxtor hard drives destroyed from
> Linux. He says he can not format them now. He also said he had called
> Maxtor, and they said they were getting several of these a week. Has
anyone
> had this? I have not yet.
>
> Louis
> Louis J. Dupree Jr. W4NRG
> 3015 Englewood Dr.
> Kinston, NC 28504
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> http://wwp.icq.com/187690
>
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