Author Topic: Low level format error with JFS  (Read 11294 times)

Doug Clark

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Low level format error with JFS
« on: February 03, 2018, 08:43:28 pm »
I have couple of new Toshiba 1 TB hard drives that I am trying to format. I used

format x: /FS:JFS /L

and a few seconds later receive the error

Internal error: devices.c(532): Write error 87 (INVALID_PARAMETER)

This happens with 2 brand new drives, so I don't know if it is a software issue, problem with both drives, or what.

Does anyone else low level format spinning hard drives anymore?


Dave Yeo

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Re: Low level format error with JFS
« Reply #1 on: February 03, 2018, 08:54:39 pm »
I have couple of new Toshiba 1 TB hard drives that I am trying to format. I used

format x: /FS:JFS /L

and a few seconds later receive the error

Internal error: devices.c(532): Write error 87 (INVALID_PARAMETER)

This happens with 2 brand new drives, so I don't know if it is a software issue, problem with both drives, or what.

Does anyone else low level format spinning hard drives anymore?

Yes, it has usually worked here, though it takes a long time.
Did you fix the geometry on those drives to be compatible with OS/2?

Doug Bissett

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Re: Low level format error with JFS
« Reply #2 on: February 03, 2018, 11:43:03 pm »
Quote
Does anyone else low level format spinning hard drives anymore?

format x: /FS:JFS /L is not a low level format. It is a LONG (VERY, very, LONG, depending on the volume size) file system format. I doubt if disks will actually do a low level format any more. If you try using /L on a 1 TB drive, you might as well start it, then come back sometime next week, and it might be finished. With JFS, I have never used /L, it seems to be totally unnecessary, and won't do anything useful anyway.

Dave is probably right, that you need to fix the geometry. Use DFSEE to wipe the front end of the disk, then use LVM (Logical Volume Manager) to create the volumes. Then, format them, without /L.

ivan

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Re: Low level format error with JFS
« Reply #3 on: February 04, 2018, 12:22:04 pm »
Quote
Does anyone else low level format spinning hard drives anymore?

No!

Actually that is not quite correct because you can buy the necessary disk tools ($$$$$) from the manufacturer and even then if you mess things up there is no comeback on them.

As Doug says there is no need to do that with todays disks.

Dave Yeo

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Re: Low level format error with JFS
« Reply #4 on: February 04, 2018, 07:51:50 pm »
I missed the low level part of the question. Doing a long format will stress out the disk, force any bad blocks to be marked and is a test of a questionable disk, especially combined with the smart data.

Doug Bissett

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Re: Low level format error with JFS
« Reply #5 on: February 04, 2018, 09:14:16 pm »
Quote
Doing a long format will stress out the disk, force any bad blocks to be marked and is a test of a questionable disk, especially combined with the smart data.

Actually, by the time any of those things start to show a problem, the disk is well on it's way out the door. Since the disk hardware reassigns bad blocks to spares, behind the scenes, if you ever see a bad block, found by a long format (or anything else), it means that every last spare block has been used, and there is a good chunk of the disk that is bad.

Personally, I don't have much faith in Smart technology, to determine if a disk is bad, or good, but it might reinforce what other symptoms are indicating.

Dave Yeo

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Re: Low level format error with JFS
« Reply #6 on: February 04, 2018, 11:08:00 pm »
You can do something like what I recently did with a used drive I picked up at the thrift store.
Look at the SMART data, in particular things like number of reallocated sectors, which was zero. Format the drive with the long parameter. Look again at the SMART data. If something like the number of reallocated sectors went up, you know the drive may be on the way out. In my case the numbers didn't really change so I'm now using the drive as a scratch disk and also for a Linux install.

Doug Clark

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Re: Low level format error with JFS
« Reply #7 on: February 09, 2018, 07:29:19 pm »
I am sorry I used the wrong terminology - I should have said long format instead of low level format.

From what I have read on line since posting the question I am siding with Doug B. that a long format is probably not necessary.

Part of my motivation on doing a long format is so that strange things will not be "recovered" with a chkdsk /F:3 - although on a brand new drive there shouldn't be anything previous to be "recovered" that shouldn't be recovered.

But in any case, it would appear to me that FORMAT /FS:JFS /L has some issues with new(er) Toshiba drives and newer Seagate drives. I did a long format on a new Toshiba which returned errors in JFS on Windows 7 and saw no errors.   I don't know if this is a JFS issue, or a driver issue, or if all the drives I have from different makers are bad and I simply didn't see the error message(s) in Windows.

Dave Yeo

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Re: Low level format error with JFS
« Reply #8 on: February 10, 2018, 01:54:12 am »
Assuming that you have the CHS values set up correctly, JFS shouldn't return errors doing a long format. You might want to try checking the disks with dfsee (dfsee.com, free for evaluation).
Another thing to consider on newer drives is that most now use 4k sectors and fake 512byte sectors. As JFS also defaults to 4k blocks, it is good to set the drive up so they're aligned.

Valery Sedletski

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Re: Low level format error with JFS
« Reply #9 on: February 10, 2018, 04:02:21 am »
Disks > 512 GB are officially not supported on eCS / ArcaOS. But unofficially, they work with some tricks. You need to use DFSee to create volumes on them, and assign drive letters. The reason is a non-standard geometry of such drives. DaniS506 and OS2AHCI on drives from 512 GB to 1 TB assign a geometry of 127 sectors per track, and for drives from 1 TB to 2 TB, a geometry of 255 sectors per track, instead of 63 standard sectors per track. Some tools like lvm.exe or IBM Boot manager, or AirBoot, may not like such drives. So, special tricks with DFSee are required. I'm using two 2 TB drives on two machines, successfully, but OS/2 Boot manager or AirBoot don't even boot a boot sector. I use my FreeLDR or _dixie_'s QSINIT instead, as they aren't so picky regarding the disk geometry.

PS: I observed JFS CHKDSK/FORMAT errors with such drives, too. Looks like in your case too.
« Last Edit: February 10, 2018, 04:04:11 am by Valery Sedletski »

Neil Waldhauer

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Re: Low level format error with JFS
« Reply #10 on: February 10, 2018, 03:34:22 pm »
I'm using 1 TB and 2 TB drives with geometry the same as Mr. Sedletski. However, for me AirBoot is working fine, and Format and Chkdsk are working as well as can be for JFS. I didn't speak up, because I didn't use Format /L. I am a bit curious how long it would take to format a 2 TB JFS volume with /L.

I'm seeing the performance of Chkdsk is really good with AHCI and 2TB drive. Firefox seems to easily get the computer to shut down with drives dirty. One time I got 38000 lost files (machine hung right after I deleted them) and OS/2 is sometimes hard pressed to process 38000 files in a directory.
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Greg Pringle

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Re: Low level format error with JFS
« Reply #11 on: February 10, 2018, 07:28:48 pm »
My experience is the 38000 files is not a problem unless:

1. the directory is accessed from the desktop.

2. the file system has been written to over 90% over and over and over.

From the command line the numbers can easily be over 100000 files in a directory without a problem.

I use java to read and write directories with huge numbers of files.
The trick is I only use my own utilities for doing directory listings.
These are smart utilities that limit what is actually put into memory.

Also if I need to archive files and the huge directories are actually just archived files I have a utility that.
I use a utility that makes sub-directories by day or hour and move the files to those directories.
Then it will delete files and directories of a number of days old. That number can be say 360 days.
This practice keeps any directory from getting overly huge so listings can be run easily.