All, I am trying to format a new hard drive. It is a Seagate Medalist Pro ST34342A located at http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/specs/ata/st34342a.html. Anyway, this drive was on a FreeBSD system and is now being installed on a Solaris 8 Ultra 10. step 1: I define the type: cylinders, sectors, and heads. format> type AVAILABLE DRIVE TYPES: 0. Seagate 1. Seagate 2. other Specify disk type (enter its number)[1]: 2 Enter number of data cylinders: 8894 Enter number of alternate cylinders[2]: Enter number of physical cylinders[8896]: Enter number of heads: 15 Enter number of data sectors/track: 63 Enter rpm of drive[3600]: 4500 Enter format time[default]: Enter cylinder skew[default]: Enter track skew[default]: Enter tracks per zone[default]: Enter alternate tracks[default]: Enter alternate sectors[default]: Enter cache control[default]: Enter prefetch threshold[default]: Enter minimum prefetch[default]: Enter maximum prefetch[default]: Enter disk type name (remember quotes): Seagate WARNING: /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/dad@1,0 (dad1): offline selecting c0t1d0 dad1: disk okay [disk formatted, no defect list found] step 2: next I try to "label the disk" format> label Ready to label disk, continue? y WARNING: /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/dad@1,0 (dad1): ID not found WARNING: timeout: reset bus chno = 0 targ = 1 WARNING: /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/dad@1,0 (dad1): disk not responding to selection WARNING: /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/dad@1,0 (dad1): ID not found WARNING: timeout: reset bus chno = 0 targ = 1 WARNING: /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/dad@1,0 (dad1): ID not found WARNING: timeout: reset bus chno = 0 targ = 1 Warning: error writing VTOC. WARNING: /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/dad@1,0 (dad1): ID not found WARNING: timeout: reset bus chno = 0 targ = 1 DIOCTL_RWCMD: I/O error Warning: error reading backup label. WARNING: /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/dad@1,0 (dad1): ID not found WARNING: timeout: reset bus chno = 0 targ = 1 DIOCTL_RWCMD: I/O error Warning: error reading backup label. WARNING: /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/dad@1,0 (dad1): ID not found WARNING: timeout: reset bus chno = 0 targ = 1 DIOCTL_RWCMD: I/O error Warning: error reading backup label. WARNING: /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/dad@1,0 (dad1): ID not found WARNING: timeout: reset bus chno = 0 targ = 1 DIOCTL_RWCMD: I/O error Warning: error reading backup label. WARNING: /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/dad@1,0 (dad1): ID not found WARNING: timeout: reset bus chno = 0 targ = 1 DIOCTL_RWCMD: I/O error Warning: error reading backup label. Warning: no backup labels Label failed. format> What are these errors and what do they mean? How do I get around this problem?