Need to automate formatting HD's

[Todo]

i know there has to be a way to automate a format. i've got about 6 machines running and need to format IDE hard drives. can someone point me in the right direction so i can make a disk that will automate this process?

[Gollo]

put format /s in an autoexec.bat on a bootable disk?

[Todo]

put format /s in an autoexec.bat on a bootable disk?

Thanks. i forgot, i guess it was that easy. well, another question. i'm about to test lots and lots of SCSI HD's. how can i test 3-5 of them in one machine at a time. these are mainly Seagate and Western Digital HD's.
thanx.

[Gollo]

How do you plan on checking them? Any special utility or do you just want to run scandisk on them? I don't really think you can automate that but having them all in the same system is a time saver in it's self.

[Todo]

How do you plan on checking them? Any special utility or do you just want to run scandisk on them? I don't really think you can automate that but having them all in the same system is a time saver in it's self.

well, i've got 2 guys that need to test all of these SCSI drives. they need to partition and format the drives. no need to scandisk them. using FDISK takes a long time. what i need is a special utility to partition and format several at a time.

[Gollo]

Are they all going to be identical (same partition size)? I would think you could do it with ghost by imaging a blank drive formated and bootable with all the partitions and then just copy it to the other drives.

[melee5]

Bart's ScsiTool can format multiple drives at one time but this would be the low level type of format where you can change the byte count of the sectors from 512 to ??? if you want - I don't think it's the MSDOS type of format.

But aefdisk works well with batch files and can both partition and then format the drive in a wink - but the format is in name only, there is no testing of whether random sectors are actually accessable as MSDOS format does. Aefdisk apparently just creates dir and FAT stucture and quits there - that's why it's so fast. Would work for thoughly tested drives though...

Bart's ScsiTool
http://www.nu2.nu/scsitool/

Aefdisk
http://www.aefdisk.com

[RejectionMan]

batch program your self a boot disk using the command options menus.

some fdisk utilitys allow you to enter all th einstructions at hte command line, and format allows you to run format X: /s /u so it wont ask questions...

[The_Tech]

FIRST make a bootable 98se boot disk.

make a new text file called FC.TXT

FC.txt is a txt file that has the keybord responses you type.

insert the following and save.

Y
ENTER

make a BAT file called FORMATC.BAT
enter this command line:

FORMAT C: /Q /U /S /V:WIN98SE<A:\FC.txt

Quick, Unconditional , System , and Volume Label
FC.txt redirects the output of the format.com and switches to be controlled by the commands in the text file.


copy FC.TXT FORMAT.COM and FORMATC.BAT to bootable 98se Bootdisk

you could automate even further by creating an autoexec.bat file
and run the FORMATC.BAT from there.


Hope this helps.

The_Tech

[silencio]

I know this is a looooong process but many SCSI cards have a low level format in teh bios that will test the media. If the drives are small (9-18gig) it can take as little as 15 minutes.

[arch0nmyc0n]

I don't know if this will help you... but there is a Free Fdisk program out there that bypasses the "verifying integrity" poop... it also has command line switches that can help automate the process very easily... I use it on my windows autoload CDs... there is also a Free Format utility that can quick format even new, never used drives... but I'm assuming you wanna do a full format to find bad sectors and stuff.... I hope this helps in some way, shape or form...