Chuck(G)
25k Member
I'm mostly here for business reasons--I deal in old media recovery.
Do you suppose that formatting attempts to update/write more than once to the same sector? That's a no-no on WORM.What’s really strange is, I managed to write a SCSI disk driver to one of the CCW WORM discs, but when it comes to formatting a usable partition it gives an error and fails.
That's exactly what I think.Do you suppose that formatting attempts to update/write more than once to the same sector?
Right. Which is the reason for this thread: finding the software that is used for making WORM discs work on Macintosh.That's exactly what I think.
"MO" doesn't automatically imply "WORM". If the tools aren't specifically for WORM disks, you're going to create an expensive piece of garbage every time. You can't treat WORM disks as if they are "normal".
My guess is about the same as yours. I was thinking it writes the SCSI driver and a provisional partition to the disc successfully. Then attempts to convert the provisional partition into a working one, but the disc sector storing the partition map was already written once, so it puts an error up because it couldn’t write an updated partition map to the disc.Do you suppose that formatting attempts to update/write more than once to the same sector? That's a no-no on WORM.
Other than using an WORM disc filesystem driver, I believe that your only practical option to get a normal HFS+ readable disc is to prepare an image of the disc and then write the whole thing at once. Of course, you don't want to bother with writing the unused sectors, but you get the idea. This would be simple enough to do using Linux and the loop device, but I confess not knowing enough about the internals of old Mac OS to venture a guess at a method.
Because the idea of using a WORM disk intrigues me, and I want to learn how this works, exactly. It’s the reason I use vintage hardware, to experience it.I know we are limited here by your hardware availability but why not just go with magneto optical at this point and flip the write protect switch? There is an insane amount of workarounds at play here.
Right, but the 5.25 MO drives claim to support writing to WORM media. So wouldn’t that make them multifunction RW/WORM units ?That's not all that helpful, is it? None of the drives listed under "Optical Drives" is a WORM unit--they're all rewritable as far as I can tell. I still have a disk for the Pinnacle Apex.