4.4.1WHY YOU NEED TO DO THIS
A new SCSI disk drive is normally low-level formatted at the factory to simplify installation. Every SCSI hard-disk drive must be physically low-level formatted, partitioned, and logically formatted before it can be used to store data. SCSI hard disks are physically low-level formatted at the factory and do not usually need to be formatted again. (If you do need to low-level format a disk, see Section 4.4.2.)
Howevere, if you connect a new SCSI hard-disk drive to your Ultra2 LVD SCSI Host Adapter, you must partition and logically format the drive. For DOS, Windows 3.x***?, Windows 95, and Windows 98, use the DOS commands FDISK and FORMAT to do this (refer to the documentation for your PC, your hard drive, DOS, and—if necessary—Windows). For other operating systems, refer to the operating system’s documentation for instructions.
If you are booting from a SCSI hard-disk drive, make sure the “Hard Disk” or “Hard Drives” setting in your PC’s CMOS program is set to “None” or “No Drives Installed,” as is required for SCSI hard drives. See your PC’s documentation for details.
If you’ve installed both SCSI and non-SCSI (IDE, for example) disk drives, the non-SCSI drive is typically the boot drive. But if your computer supports the BBS (BIOS Boot Specification), not only can both SCSI and non-SCSI drives coexist, you can specify which drive to boot from. See your PC’s documentation for more details.
4.4.2LOW-LEVEL FORMATTING
A low-level format will erase any data that is stored on the target disk. Before attempting to perform a low-level format, make sure the data on the target disk has been backed up. You can do a low-level format with the Ultra2 LVD SCSI Host Adapter’s SmartSCSI Setup Utility; see Section 4.6.6.
The low-level format sets the media to a state which is easily recognized by the host adapter on the SCSI bus. Once this format is completed, you will need to partition the drive. Refer to your operating system’s documentation for further information on partitioning drives.
