How to format a 2nd SCSI drive on PowerMac 8500 running Mac OS 8.1

[cplum]

I have a PowerMac 8500 running Mac OS 8.1. It has a 2nd SCSI drive that I installed Yellow Dog Linux on about 20 years ago. Using the bootX extension, I can choose to boot either into 8.1 on the main drive or YDL on the 2nd drive. I have no need for the YDL install anymore and would like to use the 2nd drive as a backup/clone of the main drive. I figured I could just run Drive Setup to initialize it, but it just shows the drive as "<not supported>". Here's a photo of the screen (sorry, had to use a camera photo of the screen):

I probably originally initialized it as part of the YDL install (likely using the fdisk tool). I'm guessing Drive Setup doesn't like how the drive is formatted and/or partitioned, so it is just ignoring it rather than reformat it. Is there an way to resolve this? If need be, I still have the YDL install CDs, so I could run the YDL installer, and when it comes time to format the disk maybe fdisk could format it in a way that Drive Setup likes, although I really don't know if it is capable of that (make it an hfs volume?).

thanks

 

[cplum]

I found the problem and the solution. The problem is that Drive Setup only recognizes drives from Apple. I guess in the old days when you added a 2nd drive or replaced the original, you used whatever software came with the drive to initialize it. The solution is a hacked version of Drive Setup that will recognize all drives. I followed the instruction on the web page below, and now in Drive Setup the drive status has changed from "<not supported>" to "<not mounted>", and if I select the drive I can now click on the Initialize... button.

Format Any Hard Drive for Older Macs with Patched Apple Tools | Low End Mac

Having said all that, after getting Disk Setup working, I explored a bit more on this old machine, and found I had a bunch of 3rd party disk utilities installed, a few of which seem capable of initializing this drive, including ones from APS and FWB.