yap@me.utoronto.ca (Davin Yap) (11/06/89)
I've reformatted my HD, and restored the files with the following
results:
Intuition proved correct, reformatting didn't solve my problem, in fact,
it made it worse. Now Norton's 'nu' and chkdsk both consistently report
that clusters 2-651 are not allocated. However, I know without a doubt
that files live in that area, the terminal program I'm using right now
lives in that area! Listings of the two directories in that area show
that all the files are there, and Norton's 'dt' (disk test) report that
all is well. Conclusion, some programs can read the FAT for that area of
the disk and others cannot. This led one of my cohorts to conclude that
I have a 'weak' sector in my FAT area, and I'm inclined to agree. The
obvious solution would be to reformat the disk with a better formatting
program than the one provided with DOS - it took less than two minutes
for format.com to format each of my two twenty meg partitions, this
doesn't bode well for its thoroughness in my eyes.
I need suggestions for a VERY GOOD formatting program.
Thanks for your replies, Davin
_______________leave_nothing_to_the_imagination_of_those_without_______________
GOAL: To dance the light fan- |Davin Yap, Mechanical Engineering, U of Toronto
tastic in the face of derision,| yap@me.toronto.edu yap@me.utoronto.bitnet
from those bland at heart. | ...{pyramid,uunet}!utai!utme!yapfredex@cg-atla.UUCP (Fred Smith) (11/07/89)
In article <89Nov6.022738est.18444@me.utoronto.ca> yap@me.utoronto.ca (Davin Yap) writes: >I've reformatted my HD, and restored the files with the following >results: > > The >obvious solution would be to reformat the disk with a better formatting >program than the one provided with DOS - it took less than two minutes >for format.com to format each of my two twenty meg partitions, this >doesn't bode well for its thoroughness in my eyes. A H A !!!! You see, DOS' format.com DOES NOT FORMAT A HARD DISK! even though it does format a floppy. On a hard disk it does a bit of noodling around and writes a fat and root directory for a blank disk. Probably does some other things, too, but it DOES NOT do a low-level format. Therefore, if you had "weak" spots on the disk before, then you still do! The Advanced diagnostics for the IBM PC/XT (and presumably the AT) have a function to do a low-level format on a "fixed disk". Many controllers also have the ability to do so, if you can find out how to access it on your particular controler. There has been much discussion of this in this group and others this year. So, you need to find one of these methods and do a LOW LEVEL format! Fred
bobmon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (RAMontante) (11/08/89)
Perhaps some programs are using one copy of the FAT, and others are using the other --- the `primary' copy may lie on a bad sector, while programs that automatically try the `second' copy find files okay.
bumby@math.rutgers.edu (Richard Bumby) (11/08/89)
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