morrison@ug.cs.dal.ca (Brad Morrison) (11/28/89)
Spinrite DOES the low-level REformat of your HD, but, the reason it costs so m much is that it doesn't destroy any data! In fact it can usually resurect data that has fallen on weak media. Spinrite will not wipe your disk clean when it reformats. Brad Morrison
bcw@rti.UUCP (Bruce Wright) (11/28/89)
In article <29202@genrad.UUCP>, rob@genrad.UUCP (Rob Wood) writes: > > A hard drive had two partitions, one DOS, one non-DOS. This is reported > by FDISK. I want to delete the non-DOS partition and make just one DOS > partition on this 30 MB drive. FDISK won't let me. An IBM dealer said > that I should run the low-level disk formatter. I did the following: > DEBUG > -g=c800:5 > And the system just hangs, and has to be powered off to reboot. I tried > running from both a floppy and the hard drive. I went to the computer > store looking for help and bought Spinrite. The salesman said it would do > low-level formatting, but now the instructions use the words low-level > REformat. I called and the store said to try g=c800:5. I said I did. > They said I could return the program. I thought the disk was IBM as the > AT is a true-blue IBM. What am I doing wrong? How can I get back the > lost 15MB? I opened the computer and pulled the full-size card that had > cables running to the disks, it said ONE FLOPPY ONE HARD DRIVE. No name. > Can you help me? The procedure you are using for doing a low-level format of your disk drive works for some Western Digital controllers and some others which have been made to work like (some of) the Western Digital controller series. If you have a real IBM AT, it is unlikely (though possible) that the controller is a Western Digital controller - it's probably an IBM controller. You normally reformat a drive on an IBM controller by running the IBM diagnostic disk, NOT by anything on the controller ROM as on Western Digital and similar controllers. It would of course be possible to reformat the disk on another machine using a controller which has a format program you can get hold of (like the Western Digital). You could also probably get a copy of the diagnostic disk from IBM (or an IBM dealer), though you will probably pay too much for it. I suspect that the person at that store only has experience with one kind of machine. Spinrite will not do a reformat of the entire disk - it works on a partition-by-partition basis, and won't work on non-DOS partitions. It only reformats a track at a time ... allowing a reformat "in place" if you don't mind taking the chance of a power failure corrupting your hard disk (of course, it won't corrupt more than a fairly small and easily repaired amount of it, but still ...). It's a handy utility but I would recommend that you back up the disk first or run your PC on a UPS (uninterruptable power supply). You could make the entire disk into a single "partition" by editing the partition table using a set of utilities like the Norton Utilities or the Mace Utilities, which would allow you to bypass some of the idiot proofing that FDISK has built into it. Of course, this means that if you mess up the partition table the disk could be less useable than it is now (the price you pay for removing the safety guards in FDISK). Again, you should back up the disk first if it has anything on it that you want. (or be sure that you can reconstruct the information without enormous pain). (You will have to do this in any event if you want to reformat to make a larger DOS partition, though if you just want two DOS partitions you may be able to make do with appropriate editing of the SECOND partition table entry ONLY). Good luck. Bruce C. Wright
mms00786@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (12/02/89)
The c800:5 trick - is it supposed to work with RLL controllers? Thanks Milan mms00786@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu