How long does it usually take to format a SCSI drive?

#1 Fri, 5 Sep 2014 - 20:16 68kMLA

I have a new 36GB drive on a 9600. The SCSI-2 bus is only 10mb/s so it's pretty slow. Usually when I format drives I never select low level format or zero all data. I save that only for when I have a problematic drive. For this new 36GB drive I didn't select any of that since I wanted a quick format, but it's been stuck on "installing device driver" for about 45 minutes now. Is that normal? Formatting a SATA drive takes like 5 seconds usually.

#1 Fri, 20 Apr 2007 - 23:43 PPCMLA

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#2 Sat, 21 Apr 2007 - 11:14 PPCMLA

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#2 Fri, 5 Sep 2014 - 21:09 68kMLA

what OS? i use drive setup in 9.22 to set up all my drives. and its instant. set the partitions... then initialize and bam...

#3 Fri, 5 Sep 2014 - 21:11 68kMLA

I'm using OS8.6. I had a feeling it was the size of the drive combined with the slow SCSI-2 bus. It's been stuck on "installing device driver" ever since I posted this. I almost want to turn the 9600 off and start over but that may be wasted time. The cursor is still moving and it has that spinning circle thing but I can't select windows or anything. The spinning circle will also blink every 15 seconds or so.

#4 Fri, 5 Sep 2014 - 21:15 68kMLA

Well, my drives are 73gig, and they seem to init instantly, The machine I format them with is a PM 7500, (100mhz) with a (333mhz new technologies G3 cpu card in there )

#5 Fri, 5 Sep 2014 - 21:18 68kMLA

SCSI drives, right? Not SATA or IDE with an adapter? My SATA drives are pretty much instant. SCSI seems to take longer though.

#6 Fri, 5 Sep 2014 - 21:37 68kMLA

SCSI Voodoo. Got it now. It initialized instantly.

#7 Fri, 5 Sep 2014 - 21:52 68kMLA

yup, 10k scsi, yup sound like you had some ID/Termination issue there