Non-512-byte sector drive cloning?

Cory Smelosky b4 at gewt.net
Wed Feb 11 19:18:54 CST 2015


Can it read 'em at any blocksize too? Read is far more essential than write.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Feb 11, 2015, at 19:58, 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
> ....
> 
> Regards,
> Lyle
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Bickley Consulting West Inc.
> http://bickleywest.com
> 
> "Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"


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