Dell 3 - Manual (Page 182)

180 PERC 3 BIOS Configuration Utility
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This deletes the logical drive and makes the space it occupied available
for you to make another logical drive.
Formatting Physical Drives
You can do low-level formatting of SCSI drives using the BIOS
Configuration Utility. Because most SCSI disk drives are low-level
formatted at the factory, this step is usually not necessary. Usually, you must
format a disk if:
• The disk drive was not low-level formatted at the factory, or
• An excessive number of media errors have been detected on the disk
drive.
Media Errors
Perform the following steps to view the media errors for the drive to be
formatted.
1 Select Objects—> Physical Drives from the Management Menu.
2 Select the Physical Drives option, and choose a device.
3 Press <F2>.
The View Drive Information screen displays. The error count displays
at the bottom of the properties screen. If you feel that the number of
errors is excessive, you should probably format the disk drive. If more
than 32 media errors were detected, PERC 3 automatically puts the
drive in FAIL state. This occurs even in a degraded RAID set. The
errors display as they occur. When there are errors, formatting the
drive can clear up the problem.
You do not have to choose Format to erase existing information on
your SCSI disks, such as a DOS partition. That information is erased
when you initialize logical drives.
Formatting Drives
You can format the physical drives using:
• Batch Formatting. The Format option in the PERC 3 BIOS
Configuration Utility main menu lets you format up to eight disk
drives simultaneously.