Installation guide

TDM Installation Guide8
Initializing and Maintaining
SCSI Drives
SCSI hard drives used for audio recording on
TDM systems must be formatted (or initialized)
for either the HFS or HFS plus file system. Drive
partitions of up to 2 terabytes (2000 gigabytes)
can be used.
TDM systems require that you use the Ex-
pressPro-Tools software from ATTO (included
with Pro Tools) for all drive formatting and par-
titioning; only one disk utility should be used
for all drives in a system.
To initialize a new drive:
1 Turn on your hard drives, computer, and any
other peripherals.
2 Use ATTO’s ExpressPro-Tools software version
2.3.2 to initialize and partition any new hard
drives.
Refer to the ExpressPro-Tools User’s Manual.
Formatting Drives
There are two different types of formatting:
high-level formatting and low-level formatting.
Low-Level (Physical) Formatting
Low-level formatting means completely erasing
the hard drive and rewriting each sector address
on the drive. In low-level formatting, the sector
and track addresses, error-correction codes, and
other details are written on the platters of the
hard drive in the form of a magnetic pattern. A
low-level format permanently erases all data on
the drive.
When is Low-Level Formatting Necessary?
Virtually all hard drives come pre-formatted
from the manufacturer. Low-level formatting is
generally unnecessary except in rare circum-
stances. They are:
◆ If you want to change the Block Size of the
drive. This is not recommended by Digidesign.
Digidesign systems only recognize 512-byte
blocks.
◆ If you want to perform permanent deletion of
data.
◆ If you want to clean a drive that is being mi-
grated from one operating system to another
(for instance, from UNIX to Macintosh).
Should you decide low-level formatting is neces-
sary, keep in mind that it can take up to three
hours or more (depending on the size of the
drive). Avoid power interruptions and computer
bus resets during the format operation or per-
manent damage to the drive could occur. In ad-
dition, leave the drive powered on for at least 30
minutes prior to formatting so that the drive has
time to make any necessary thermal adjust-
ments or recalibrations.
High-Level Formatting (Initialization)
High-level formatting, or initializing a drive re-
places the drive’s directory, volume partition
map and drivers. Information about the drive is
created and drivers that communicate this in-
formation to the host CPU are installed. The
drive itself is not erased, nor is verification per-
formed.
If you have existing FWB-formatted drives,
don’t install the ExpressPro-Tools exten-
sion; this can cause a conflict. This exten-
sion is not required to use the ExpressPro-
Tools software (to format new drives).
TDM_Install.book Page 8 Saturday, January 13, 2001 9:35 PM