Copyright: ® 1994 Adaptec, Inc.


Using SCSI Disk Partitioner

  Use the SCSI Disk Partitioner to perform high- and low-level formats of SCSI hard disk drives and removable drives that are not controlled by the host adapter BIOS. After the disk media is formatted you can use the SCSI Disk Partitioner to create and delete DOS partitions and to delete non-DOS partitions. An onscreen diagram shows the size and type of disk partitions on the selected device. Other information about the disk and the selected partition also appears on the screen.

The SCSI Disk Partitioner has all the functionality of the DOS-based afdisk and scsifmt utilities included with EZ-SCSI.

Click on a Related Topic to learn how to use the SCSI Disk Partitioner.

Related Topics:

Formatting a Disk Device

Verifying a Disk

Creating a Partition

Deleting a Partition

Marking an Active Partition

Committing Partition Changes

Undoing Partition Changes

Rescanning the SCSI Bus

Changing SCSI Disk Partitioner Options

Ejecting Removable Media


Formatting a Disk Device

To format a disk device

1.	Select the device from the Physical Device list on the left of the window.

2.	Select the Format... command from the Disk menu. The Format Physical Disk dialog box appears.

This command is not available if the disk device is controlled by the host adapter BIOS.

3.	If you are formatting a SCSI hard disk drive, continue with step 4. If you are formatting a removable media disk, select a format - either Standard hard drive with partition table or Floppy format (no partition table).

3a.	If you select Floppy format, choose one of the two types of floppy format, and type a floppy label if you wish.

4.	Select one or both of the formatting Options, if you wish.

Select Quick format to format the disk with no low-level initialization. Deselect this option if you want to low-level format the disk, which may take a long time depending on the size of the disk.

Select Verify disk after reformatting if you want to check the disk media for defects after the formatting is complete. Verify is also available as a separate menu command.

5.	Click Format to start the formatting process. Then confirm that you want to format the disk.

WARNING: Formatting erases all data on the disk. Be sure there is no data on the disk that you want to save.

6.	Wait until the formatting process is complete. You can now partition the disk.

Related Topics:

Creating a Partition

Committing Partition Changes


Verifying a Disk

To verify a disk device, choose Verify and Reassign from the Disk menu.

Verification looks for bad sectors on the disk media and reassigns them to good regions of the disk. Because relocated sectors are bad, their data is usually lost.


Creating a Partition

New partitions created with the SCSI Disk Partitioner are ready to use after you reboot your computer. You do not need to use the DOS format command before the partitions can be used.

To create a partition

1.	Select the disk from the Physical Device list on the left of the window.

2.	On the disk diagram, click on the free space on the disk.

3.	Click the Create button, or choose Create from the Partition menu.

4.	Enter the total number of cylinders you want in the partition and the starting cylinder number.

The SCSI Disk Partitioner suggests by default that you create one partition equal to the total capacity of the disk device.

5.	Enter a volume label for the partition, if you wish.

6.	Click the box at the bottom of the dialog box if you want to make this partition the active partition. You can have only one active partition on each disk. The operating system loads from the active partition on the boot disk.

7.	Click OK to create the partition.

Related Topics:

Deleting a Partition

Marking an Active Partition

Undoing Partition Changes

Committing Partition Changes


Deleting a Partition

To delete a partition

1.	Select the disk device on which the partition is located from the Physical Device list on the left of the window.

2.	If the disk has more than one partition, click on the partition to select it.

3.	Click on the Delete button, or choose Delete from the Partition menu.

Related Topics:

Creating a Partition

Marking an Active Partition

Undoing Partition Changes

Committing Partition Changes


Marking an Active Partition

Your DOS/Windows computer must have one "active" partition on the boot disk that contains the operating system software. This is the partition from which your computer boots.

To mark an active partition

1.	Select the disk device on which the partition is located from the Physical Device list on the left of the window.

2.	If the disk has more than one partition, click on the partition to select it.

3.	Choose Mark Active from the Partition menu.

Click here for more information about booting your computer from a partition created with the SCSI Disk Partitioner.

Related Topics:

Creating a Partition

Deleting a Partition

Undoing Partition Changes

Committing Partition Changes


Committing Partition Changes

The partition changes you make when you add or delete partitions or mark a partition active do not take effect until you click the Commit button or select Commit Changes from the Disk menu. When you select the Commit Changes command or click the button, you are asked to confirm that you want the changes to be written to the disk.

When you add new partitions to a disk device you must reboot your computer before you can access them. If you add or delete partitions, you may need to reinstall EZ-SCSI to update your system configuration with the aspidisk driver.

Related Topics:

Creating a Partition

Deleting a Partition

Undoing Partition Changes

Marking an Active Partition


Undoing Partition Changes

If you decide after you add or delete partitions that you do not want to implement the changes, you can undo them by clicking the Undo button or by selecting Undo from the Partition menu.

Changes are undone one at a time. For example, if you click the Undo button after adding two partitions to a disk one of the partitions is undone. If you click the button a second time the other partition is undone.

Note: You cannot undo partition changes with this command if you have already committed them, because the changes have already been written to the disk.

Related Topics:

Creating a Partition

Deleting a Partition

Marking an Active Partition


Rescanning the SCSI Bus

You can issue a command to rescan the SCSI bus to update the information for each SCSI disk device. This is useful if you turn on a device or change removable media after you start the SCSI Disk Partitioner.

WARNING: Any uncommitted partition changes are lost when you rescan the SCSI bus. Be sure to commit the changes first if you want to keep them.

To rescan the SCSI bus, click the Rescan button or select Rescan from the File menu.


Changing SCSI Disk Partitioner Options

To change the SCSI Disk Partitioner options, select Options from the File menu. The dialog box has four options:

•	Send start unit to removables on rescan - This causes a SCSI Start Unit command to be sent to all removable media drives when the SCSI bus is scanned.

•	Rescan searches all logical units - This causes the SCSI Disk Partitioner to search all logical units at each SCSI ID when the SCSI bus is rescanned. If the option is not selected, only the first logical unit is scanned.

•	Display BIOS drive warning - The BIOS drive warning message appears when the SCSI Disk Partitioner finds a SCSI disk device controlled by the host adapter BIOS when it scans the SCSI bus. The message tells you that you cannot format or partition these disk devices. If you deselect this option the message will no longer appear.

•	Display floptical drive warning - The floptical drive warning appears if the SCSI Disk Partitioner finds a floptical drive when it scans the SCSI bus. The message tells you that the SCSI Disk partitioner does not work with floptical drives. If you deselect this option the message will no longer appear.


Ejecting Removable Media

You can issue a command to eject media from a removable media device. To do this, select the removable device in the Physical Disk list on the left of the window. Then click the Eject button or select Eject from the Disk menu.

Note: Some removable media devices cannot eject media when you issue this command. If this happens, you may need to release the media by pressing a button or releasing a lever.


"Not controlled by the host adapter BIOS" means either that the host adapter BIOS is disabled or that the disk device is assigned a SCSI ID other than 0 or 1 and the host adapter BIOS cannot scan for it at that SCSI ID.

If a SCSI disk device IS controlled by the host adapter BIOS, you can format it with the DOS fdisk utility.


A partition table is a special control structure on a disk that records the location and size of partitions on the disk. If the partition table is lost or corrupted, DOS cannot find the partition(s), and reformatting is required.


A low-level format is equivalent to formatting with the DOS-based scsifmt utility.


A partition is a division of the storage space on a disk device. A disk device may have one or more partitions. Each partition is assigned a drive letter as though it were a separate drive.


Volume labels can be up to 11 characters long.


To boot your computer from a hard disk, you must make the partition in which the operating system is stored the "active partition," and you must make the hard disk your boot drive.


To boot your computer from an active partition created with the SCSI Disk Partitioner, you must first move the SCSI disk under host adapter BIOS control. Next, you must make it the boot disk. Then you must install operating system software on the disk. You can use the DOS sys command to copy the required DOS files to the active partition of a BIOS drive.


Creating or deleting partitions may cause your drive letters to change.


A SCSI device can have up to seven logical units (LUs). An example of a SCSI device with multiple LUs is a CD-ROM "juke box" capable of accessing multiple CD discs.