From: "Antonio Carlini" <arcarlini@iee.org>

>Having never formatted a SCSI disk in all my life, I guess
>I must be missing something! Why do you format them?

People already talked about reviving slightly munged disks.  Also,
if a disk has personal stuff on it you may want to reformat it before
giving it away, just as an easy way to be sure every sector is overwritten.
Finally ... maybe I'm the only one who still thinks removable disks are cool,
but I use magneto-opticals all the time (Fuji Dynamos).  And those may or
may not come with the low-level format already done, anyway I always reformat
them (using my PDP-11 emulator, just for fun because it can).

Re not being able to format due to 8 GB firmware limit -- I would think the
firmware would just use the SCSI "FORMAT UNIT" command, in which case it
doesn't matter how big the firmware thinks the disk is.  But I wouldn't
know for sure, anyway I doubt it hurts to try.

Yes I know everyone hates PCs but:  the BIOS setup on most PC SCSI cards has
commands to do low-level formatting of SCSI drives.  You just have to type
the right stupid key combination at the right instant during the self-test...

John Wilson
D Bit