How do I initialize my drives with ATTO ExpressPro-Tools?

When using an ATTO SCSI card, it is important that all SCSI drives attached to the ATTO card are initialized with the ATTO ExpressPro-Tools Utility. These instructions cover initialization only; it is recommended that you do not low-level format your drives.
Use ExpressPro-Tools 2.3.2 or higher. If you are using Mac OS 9.2 or higher, you must use ExpressPro-Tools 2.7 or higher. The firmware of your ATTO EPCI-DC dual channel SCSI card must be version 1.4.4 or higher. However, if you are on a Quicksilver G4, the firmware of your ATTO EPCI-DC must be version 1.6.4. or higher.
How to Initialize a drive with ExpressPro-Tools:
1. Launch the ExpressPro-Tools Utility, and go to the column that says “Buses and Drives / Buses and Devices. In this column, you will see the buses listed, e.g., “Bus 1 ATTO Technology.” When the arrow to the left of the name of the bus is pointing down, you will see your drives, e.g., “1:6:0 Disk Seagate 0.0 MB Free.”
2. Highlight the name of the drive to be initialized by single-clicking on it.
3. Go to the Utilities menu and select “Erase Disk.” Click “Okay” in the dialogue box that follows (do not enable Security Overwrite).
4. Below the Buses and Devices column is the “Create Volume(s)” area which contains three buttons. Click on the “HFS” button. This opens the “Create HFS (Standard) Volume” window. In this window you only want three things checked/enabled: “Initialize (Macintosh Volume),” “Install Driver,” and “Digital Audio” under Mode Page Optimization. One exception to this last selection: if you are initializing a DigiDrive, choose “Do not optimize” and then run the DigiDrive Tuner utility that was included with your DigiDrive.
5. Click “Okay.”
You can partition your drive by following steps 2 through 4 above and then entering a number in the “Desired Size (MB)” field that is smaller than the “Max Size (MB),” clicking “Okay” and then repeating steps 2 through 5 until an available space is initialized. In other words, if you want to partition an 18 gigabyte drive in half, create a 9 gig partition and then create another 9 gig partition.
A note regarding the ExpressPro-Tools Extension:
The ExpressPro-Tools Extension is only to be installed if you are going to be attaching multiple drives of different formats at the same time. In this scenario, you need to install the ExpressPro-Tools Extension along with enabling “Inhibit Driver Loading” for all drives in the ExpressPro-Tools Utility.
You enable “Inhibit Driver Loading” by doing the following:
Launch the ExpressPro-Tools Utility, and go to the column that says “Buses and Drives / Buses and Devices. In this column, you will see the buses listed, e.g., “Bus 1 ATTO Technology.” When the arrow to the left of the name of the bus is pointing down, you will see your drives, e.g., “1:6:0 Disk Seagate 0.0 MB Free.” Double-click on the name of the drive to open the Device Information window. In the Device Information window, put a check in the box next to Inhibit Driver Loading in order to enable it. Repeat this for all drives attached to the ATTO card (or click the “Apply to All” button to apply the settings for that drive to all drives on that SCSI channel and then repeat those steps for drives on the other SCSI channel).
The net result of installing the ExpressPro-Tools Extension and enabling Inhibit Driver Loading is that actual drivers installed on the drives will not load at boot, instead the ExpressPro-Tools Extension will act as the driver for all drives attached to the ATTO card. This is a workaround and is not as desirable as having all drives initialized with ATTO ExpressPro-Tools in the first place.
An additional note regarding the ExpressPro-Tools Extension: When you look for the ExpressPro-Tools Extension in your Extensions Manager or Extensions Folder, it will most likely not appear alphabetically because there is a “-” (bullet) before its name.

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