Can HD SC Setup or Drive Setup Format Any Disk (12/96)

Can I format any disk with Apple HD SC Setup or Drive Setup?


No. Hard disks that Apple builds into their products include a firmware response, which identifies the disk as an Apple-supplied disk, and is used in communicating with Apple's formatting utilities. Third-party disks normally do not identify themselves as being produced by Apple. Apple formatting software will therefore dim the format, initialize, or update functions when a non-Apple disk is selected for actions in the utility.

For this reason, when replacing or adding either an internal, or external disks to your Macintosh, Apple recommends choosing a third-party formatting utility that can initialize and update any disk.

An exception to the above is in the A/UX environment. The version of Apple HD SC Setup provided with A/UX does not check for the Apple disk firmware response. This is because in a UNIX environment, third-party disks are frequently used for expansion so the Apple disk identification was bypassed.


Published Date: Feb 18, 2012