Non-512-byte sector drive cloning?

[Lyle Bickley]

On Wed, 11 Feb 2015 18:04:58 -0500 (EST)
Cory Smelosky <b4 at gewt.net> wrote:

> On Wed, 11 Feb 2015, Roe Peterson wrote:
> 
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >> On Feb 11, 2015, at 4:16 PM, Cory Smelosky <b4 at gewt.net> wrote:
> >>
> >>> On Wed, 11 Feb 2015, Al Kossow wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> On 2/11/15 1:56 PM, Cory Smelosky wrote:
> >>>> netbooting NetBSD (install doable for that one.)
> >>>
> >>> You'll need to put something together that can talk to the raw
> >>> scsi interface and issue your own read commands. Are they common
> >>> command set drives?
> >>
> >> Should be.  I don't believe CompuServe did anything too silly.
> >
> > What, actually, is the blocksize?  1024 or ?
> >
> 
> 576 or 2304.

The "scu" utility, which is available for both NT and linux
environments can change the blocksize - and scads of other parameters
on most SCSI disks. It's powerful enough that you can brick a drive
if you're not careful ;)

I used to buy NOS Tandem SCSI HDD dirt cheap because they had a weird
blocksize that would make Windows/Linux systems barf. I would then
use "scu" to change the blocksize parameter of the drive to 512 - and do
a low level format. Then I'd have a "standard" SCSI HDD for a fraction
of the price of a "standard" drive.

Of course you could change the blocksize of a drive to 576 - or
anything you wanted - and then do a low level format for that blocksize.

You can pickup scu for NT and linux (including help and summary pdfs)
by anonymous ftp to my website via certain browsers or:

ftp bickleywest.com
user: anonymous
password: your email address
cd scu
....

Regards,
Lyle



-- 
Bickley Consulting West Inc.
http://bickleywest.com

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