August/15/1987




WESTERN DIGITAL CORP. AT FORMAT ROUTINE

WDFMT 2.10





WDFMT can be used on any Western DIgital AT Disk Controller to perform
any of the following tasks.

FORMAT do a low level format of the disk.

VERIFY verify the entire disk.

BAD TRACK mark bad tracks that were found
and/or enter the bad track map.

SURFACE TEST perform a surface test of the disk.

In order to format a drive, one must complete the following steps;

1) Enter drive parameters when prompted by the program
or at the DOS command line as shown below.

WDFMT drive# #cyls #head #sectors interleave precomp-cyl skew

2) Select the FORMAT option from the main menu and press .

3) When the format is complete select the VERIFY option from
the main menu.

4) When the verify is complete, select the BAD TRACK option
from the main menu. The program will give a list of
bad tracks found and ask if the tracks should be marked
as bad. Next, the user is asked to enter the manufacturer
bad track map.

5) If a surface test is desired this can be done now by
selecting SURFACE TEST from the main menu. When the
test is complete, the user should return to the BAD
TRACK option to mark bad tracks found.

WDFMT can keep track of 300 errors at a time. If more than 300 errors
are found and are to be marked bad, the user will have to repeat the
VERIFY/SURFACE TEST followed by the BAD TRACK for each group of 300.

In the drive parameter list the user is asked about alternate sector.
If alternate sector is enabled the formatter will create an alternate
sector that will be used if one sector is found to be bad during the
verify or surface test. When using this option one less sector per
track will available to DOS i.e. if you enter 35 sectors per track
the formatter will format sectors 1 through 34 and sector 0.