Ref: 11420012
Title: PC Server Fault Tolerant Low-Level Formatting
date: 2/6/90

Copyright 3Com Corporation, 1991.  All rights reserved.

Before a hard disk can be used in a Fault Tolerant PC server, a
low-level format must be run on it.  3Com strongly recommends using
the HDINIT low-level format utility provided with 3+ Fault Tolerant
(FT), because it is compatible with disk shadowing.  The use of an
incompatible low-level format utility may cause data loss or other
boot problems.

Unlike incompatible utilities such as SpeedStor and Disk Manager,
HDINIT supports FT partitions on the disk.  Also, it writes defective
tracks as bad and uses the DOS standards of 512 bytes per sector and
17 sectors per track, instead of supporting DOS extended partitions
and 34 sectors per track.  (The 34 sectors per track is why ESDI
controllers are not currently supported.)

Like other formatting utilities, HDINIT inserts its own special driver,
called ADRIVER.SYS, into the CONFIG.SYS file.  Instead of managing DOS
extended partitions, ADRIVER.SYS manages the bootable partition and the
FT partitions.

ADRIVER.SYS must appear in the CONFIG.SYS file before any other drivers
that write to the hard disk or create logical drives.  Unless a path is
specified, ADRIVER.SYS must be contained in the root directory C:.

