kaleb@mars.jpl.nasa.gov (Kaleb Keithley) (01/23/90)
I've got a Western Digital W1002 1:1 RLL controller on my system, and
over the weekend, while adding another drive to my system, I came across
a reference to 31 sectors per track. In the ROM setup, if you specify
manual entry of drive parameters, after setting cylinders, heads, and
write precomp, it will let you specify 26 or 31 sectors per track. Now
this is interesting to me, because I've never heard of 31 sector RLL.
The only thing I've heard of with that kind of sector count is ESDI drives
which have, I believe, 35 sectors per track.
I tried formatting my disk at 31, and needless to say, it wasn't successful,
but....
Anyone out there know anything concrete about this? Who makes drives that
will RLL to 31 sectors? What do they cost?
Chewey, get us outta here!
kaleb@mars.jpl.nasa.gov (818)354-8771
Kaleb Keithleyrkl@cbnewsh.ATT.COM (kevin.laux) (01/24/90)
In article <2642@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov>, kaleb@mars.jpl.nasa.gov (Kaleb Keithley) writes: | I've got a Western Digital W1002 1:1 RLL controller on my system, and | over the weekend, while adding another drive to my system, I came across | a reference to 31 sectors per track. In the ROM setup, if you specify | manual entry of drive parameters, after setting cylinders, heads, and | write precomp, it will let you specify 26 or 31 sectors per track. Now | this is interesting to me, because I've never heard of 31 sector RLL. | The only thing I've heard of with that kind of sector count is ESDI drives | which have, I believe, 35 sectors per track. | | I tried formatting my disk at 31, and needless to say, it wasn't successful, | but.... | | Anyone out there know anything concrete about this? Who makes drives that | will RLL to 31 sectors? What do they cost? The standard number of sectors per track is 17. If your hard drive physically has 31 sectors per track, then you need a controller that can do sector translation. In essence, the controller 'lies' to DOS and hides the fact that there are not 17 sectors per track. This is all transparent to the system. I suggest that you low-level format your disk and *not* manually enter the drive parameters and let the controller do the work for you. --rkl