Sleepy HD

[Powerbook97]

Well in the restoration - the HD was bound to be retiring …. I opened the drive / cleaned our the extreme stickie plastic from over the years; now sometimes she shows up to be initialized ….. Question …. do certain drives of the period need their own specific tool to be earased and initialized - I used to be ok with software but have since forgotten …. When I try it with the First aid - not so much success - most likely she has had her best years behind her

 

[Kai Robinson]

Usually Apple HD SC Setup would do the initialise of your drive, loaded from the utility disk.

However, if your drive is dead - 2.5" SCSI drives in working order are hard to find might it be time for one of these: https://androda.work/product/powerbook-bluescsi-version-4-f1-tba-pb-v4/ perhaps?

 

[Androda]

That particular model is obsolete, and has been replaced by: https://androda.work/product/powerbook-bluescsi-f4lite-tht-v1/

 

[eric]

do certain drives of the period need their own specific tool to be earased and initialized

AFAIK the only drive that needs a special utility to format is the HyperDrive - which is an odd case anyways.

You may be remembering that Apples formatting utilities limits on what drives they will format - but there are patches to allow them to format any drive.

Lastly this looks like a desktop 50 pin disk drive - if you get a SD to HD emulator solution to replace it, you'll want a 50 pin version for desktops instead the powerbook.