Formatting Disc Failure

Hi

I’m using HForm V2.61 (22-Apr-12) to format a new disc for my PandaBoard ES using my V5.18 Iyonix.

The Disc is a SanDisc SSD (120Gb), using a USB to SATA converter [Vendor ID 152d, Product 2509] – The first format attempt preceded fairly normally until it got to the “Writing defect list” section where it abort on data transfer – which I had to do a power reset to get out of – and disconnect the drive.

After the failure all I got was “No hard discs configured or detected” – so to check I hadn’t bust the disc I put it into a windows XP machine and formatted and verified it (NTFS) which worked correctly – It now appears on the RiscOS toolbar as Untitled – but HForm still gives the same “No hard discs …” error message.

Any Ideas?

Richard

Is this intended to be a boot drive? If not, why not have it Fat32 formatted and use Fat32fs to access it. I find on the BB that a fat32 disc is faster than a RISC OS formatted drive.

This is the latest HForm. I used the earlier SCSIForm version and that worked fine on the ARMini.

It is intended to be the boot drive.

I’m afraid we found various SSDs and USB/sata interfaces to give very variable results :( You might have better luck formatting on the panda itself, but that’s just a guess – I haven’t done any testing from an Iyo.

“The first format attempt preceded fairly normally until it got to the “Writing defect list” section where it abort on data transfer”

I don’t think it makes sense to do this as it is done internally by the SSD. A CF card may allow you to as it simulates a HD closely.
Have you tried formatting with just initialise? And bypass the defect options.
HTH

The issue is – I’m unable to make a second attempt as HForm won’t identify that I have any discs present – Dispite the desktop showing that I have.

Can you bring it with you to the ROUGOL meeting on monday?

I’ll have my PandaBoard there which has a version of Hform that works.

Can Do! See you Monday.