how to format an ide hard disc in a usb enclosure

[Alexander Sack]

On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 6:33 PM, Julian Stacey <jhs at berklix.org> wrote:
> Hi freebsd-scsi@,
> How does one reformat an IDE disc in a USB enclosure appearing on
> 7.0-Release via devd as /dev/ da0 da0s1 da0s1a da0s1c pass1 ?
>
> su
> camcontrol devlist
>  <MATSHITA UJDA730 DVD/CDRW 1.00>   at scbus2 target 0 lun 0 (pass0,cd0)
>  <USB 2.0 Storage Device 0100>      at scbus3 target 0 lun 0 (pass1,da0)
> camcontrol format da0
>  You are about to REMOVE ALL DATA from the following device:
>  camcontrol: scsiformat: error sending inquiry
> camcontrol format 3:0:0
>  You are about to REMOVE ALL DATA from the following device:
>  camcontrol: scsiformat: error sending inquiry
>
> Should I be using something from ports/ ? eg
>
> cd /usr/ports/sysutils/smartmontools ...
> smartctl -i -T verypermissive  /dev/da0
> Device: USB 2.0  Storage Device   Version: 0100
>>> Terminate command early due to bad response to IEC mode page
> A mandatory SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or more '-T permissive' options.
>
> cd /usr/ports/sysutils/sformat ... sformat -auto 0 0 3
> ...
> Enter number of heads -1 (1 - 255)/<cr>:
>        ... too many questions I dont know answer to,
>        I just want to reformat whole device.
>
> Background
> Yes, perhaps as the disc is throwing errors, it might be dieing,
> &/or bad disc sector list might be full/ filling, but that doesn't
> worry me: I had to power cycle it rapidly while travelling, might
> have been the reason, &/or maybe USB hub didnt deliver enough power
> then (despite doubler cable, thus 1.0A not 0.5A), but theres' nothing
> vital on that disk, it's just a scratch space for experiments, so
> I'd like to reformat.

Julian are you trying low-level format the drive (something I don't
recommend) or just write a new filesystem (a much better approach)?  I
would look at mkfs/bsdlabel commands to remake the filesystem so you
can mount it again.  Actually you can probably run sysinstall and use
the disk creation options to do the dirty work as well.

-aps