Setup and Benchmarks of Several ESDI Hard Disks and Controller Cards

ESDI Troubleshooting

These are the troubleshooting hints that helped me:

Make sure, that controller and hard disk have proper airflow to prohibit component overheating. Especially the processor driven cache controllers are heat sensitive and need sufficient airflow. Overheating components lead to read/write errors and may damage the hard disk.

Use only known good cables. Wherever possible use keyed attachment plugs to prohibit wrong way round connections. Make sure to connect Pin 1 of the controller pin header connector with pin 1 of the ribbon cable connector. Proper cabling solves most setup problems.

If the system hangs at boot up with a DPT controller card and an uninitialized drive, wait. The controller does a lot of checking before it allows to continue the boot process.

HP ESDI drives should be installed in a solid support structure. Under heavy load they are able to rock the chassis.

If the controller BIOS doesn't recognize the drive:
1. make sure that the controller card matches the drive's data rate
2. check cabling
3. care for proper cooling of the controller board
4. setup drive to hard-sector mode
5. reduce the 512-byte-sector per track count to 35 for 10MHz drives, reduce the 512-byte-sector per track count to 53 for 15MHz drives
6. reduce the 512-byte-sector per track count to 34 for 10MHz drives, reduce the 512-byte-sector per track count to 52 for 15MHz drives

If the controller BIOS doesn't recognize the drive and the drive was recently low-level-formatted through third party software (e.g. DiskManager, Speedstor, SGA4FMTP, system BIOS) the manufacturer defect list may be deleted accidentally. You can create a new almost empty manufacturer defect list with a Datatechnology ESDI controller card and the utility '2bdfmt.exe'. If no defect list is provided by the drive, enter at least one defect in the list and safe it. After that procedure, the drive may be regularly low- level-formatted by any ESDI controller card.
In case you have an Ultrastor controller at hand, after that procedure you are able even to restore the original manufacturer defect list from the cylinder 4095 defect list.

Do not use third party software (e.g. DiskManager, Speedstor, SGA4FMTP, system BIOS) to low-level-format an ESDI drive. Use the controller BIOS or manufacturer utilities instead.