Non-512-byte sector drive cloning?

[Lyle Bickley]

On Wed, 11 Feb 2015 18:04:20 -0700
Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:

> 
> > On Feb 11, 2015, at 5:58 PM, Lyle Bickley
> > <lbickley at bickleywest.com> wrote:
> > 
> > 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
> > ….
> 
> Isn’t the scu utility a data-destructive one, which would be, ummm,
> really bad for recovering the data from these drives?

It's a diagnostic tool - you can look at things - or wipe out things.
Your choice...

Lyle

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

"Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"