Specifications

Chapter 6 SCSI Setup and Configurations

Formatter and partitioner (afdisk)

Use the DOS-based afdisk utility to partition and format SCSI hard

disk drives, Floptical

drives, and magneto-optical drives. You can

also use afdisk to remove DOS and non-DOS partitions from a disk

drive, and to format removable media in standard hard disk format,

OS/2 floppy format, or DOS V (Japanese) format.

Note: Use afdisk only if the disk device is not controlled by

the host adapter BIOS. That is, if the host adapter

does not have BIOS, or if its BIOS is not enabled. If

the disk device is controlled by the host adapter

BIOS, use the DOS afdisk utility to partition and

format the disk device. (See the MS-DOS documen-

tation.)

Run afdisk from the DOS prompt only, not from the Windows

MS-DOS prompt. Before you run it, make sure that the disk devices

you want to format and partition are connected to the host adapter and

are powered on. Then follow these steps:

1. Change to the directory where afdisk.exe is located (usually

c:\scsi), type afdisk at the DOS prompt, and press Enter. Informa-

tion about your SCSI disk devices appears on the screen. (The

number that appears after Target is the device’s SCSI ID.)

2. Use the arrow keys to move the highlight bar to the disk device

you want to partition, and then press Enter.

- If the selected disk device is controlled by the host adapter BIOS,

you can view information about it but you cannot partition it with

afdisk. (Use the DOS afdisk and format utilities.)

- If the selected disk device is unpartitioned, you must partition it

before you can format it. To do this, follow the instructions on the

screen. (Press F1 to see an explanation of the partitioning options.)

Information about the selected disk device appears in the lower

left of the screen. Disks smaller than 1 GB have 64 heads, 32

sectors per track, and cylinders equal to the number of megabytes

of available capacity. Disks larger than 1 GB have 255 heads, 63

sectors per track, and one cylinder per 8 MB of available capacity.