SUMMARY: Anyone using format?

From: Denis Beauchemin (denbea@sisca.qc.ca)
Date: Thu Mar 14 1996 - 16:01:47 CST


Hi,

My original post follows at the end... There seems to be more people in
favor of skipping disk format (12 people) than there are in favor of it
(9 excluding myself).

The reasons for omitting format are:
- the factory format does a better job
- new disks don't need it (only disks older than 3 years)
- 9GB disks may get formatted incorrectly under Solaris 1 (don't know
  about Solaris 2)

The reasons for formating are:
- it's fast with Artecon's DiskTool (free from ftp.artecon.com)
- we had to do it in the "good old days" (5-10 years ago)
- shipping may cause problems
- it doesn't take you that much time when done while the system is running

Many people were not sure if they still needed to format disks since
disks have more sophisticated firmware than they used to.

Well, I guess I will now skip formats when I can't do it "in the
background". Since people didn't seem to care about the bad blocks
extraction, I guess I will just partition the disks and voila!

I'm not sure why, but I got the feeling that only "experienced" sysadmins
still format disks. I guess it's a sign of the times. 8-)

Thanks to everyone who answered my call:
        Robert Bonomi <bonomi@delta.eecs.nwu.edu>
        Philip Kao <phil.kao@artecon.com>
        jakem@apex.com (Jake Mahon)
        Daniel.Blander@ACSacs.com
        "David B. Chorlian" <davidc@panix.com>
        Tom Mornini <tmornini@infomania.com>
        Nathan Chan <mrgq@inx.inx.net>
        Venkata Ramakrishna R <ramu@duettech.com>
        mickey@intr.net
        dougj@xray.ufl.edu (Doug Jones)
        John Rosenberg <jcr@bgumby.bwh.harvard.edu>
        mrs@cadem.mc.xerox.com (Mike Salehi)
        Kevin.Sheehan@uniq.com.au (Kevin Sheehan {Consulting Poster Child})
        teffta@erie.ge.com (Andrew R. Tefft)
        jnapier@soemail.ucsd.edu (Jim Napier)
        "David H. Brierley" <dhb@ssd.ray.com>
        poffen@San-Jose.ate.slb.com (Russ Poffenberger)
        Kevin Inscoe (CRC-LSG x2082) <kpi@hobbes.crc.com>
        Lyle Miller <lyle@ocs.com>
        Graydon Dodson <grdodson@lexmark.com>
        kwthomas@wizard.nssl.uoknor.edu (Kevin W. Thomas)
        Mike Heisler <mike@msc.cornell.edu>

Original posting:
______________________________________________________________________
Hi,

I was wondering if people feel compelled (like me) to format every hard
disk they receive either from Sun or some other source.

In the format I always go to the defect submenu to extract bad blocks (the list
is almost always empty) and then start the format process.

Some people aroud here say that there is no need to format a new disk.
Since the format process takes so much time, I was wondering if it is time
well spent.

Are the bad block extraction and format worth it? What potential problems
could we run into if we don't do it?

Thanks!
______________________________________________________________________
Denis Beauchemin, ift.a., MCPS, Conseiller en Exploitation
SISCA inc., 2144 King Ouest, bureau 240, Sherbrooke QC Canada J1J 2E8
tel: (819) 564-4003; fax: (819) 569-8597; http://www.sisca.qc.ca



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