jwbirdsa@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (James Webster Birdsall) (01/11/89)
I seem to recall that CHKDSK in its report gives the number of bytes occupied by bad sectors. Is this correct? I have two hard drives. CHKDSK makes no mention of bad sectors on either one of them. Have I been incredibly lucky? Is the bad sector rate on hard disks lower than I think it is? Is there some switch I need to give CHKDSK to make it report bad sectors? What? For your information, I have a Plus Hardcard (10 meg) and a Seagate 238R. Thanks in advance... ======================================================================== ! James W. Birdsall Compu$erve: 71261,1731 ! ! jwbirdsa@phoenix.Princeton.EDU jwbirdsa@bogey.Princeton.EDU ! ! jwbirdsa@pucc.BITNET ...allegra!princeton!phoenix!jwbirdsa! ======================================================================== ! During emergency landing, replace dinner tray and bring seat to ! ! upright position. Extinuish all smoking materials... including ! ! spacecraft, if possible. --Calvin ! ========================================================================
dougm@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (Douglas Miller) (01/11/89)
CHKDSK will not detect and set bad clusters (containing bad sectors). It is only capable of checking the starting cluster numbers in the directories against the file allocation cluster chains for the various files. On the basis of that information it will tell you which chains are unconnected or cross connected or have multiple references in the directories. CHKDSK will, incidentally, report any bad cluster marks it may have found while analyzing the FAT. In order to set the bad sectors you must feed the information from the bad sector map (usually attached to the disk in the form of a sticker) provided by the manufacturer to a program designed to perform that function. You may also do the calculations and the setting by hand (NU or Debug). The bad cluster mark is FF7 hex for 12-bit MSDOS FATs and FFF7 for the 16-bit variety. As for DOS 4.0 and UNIX I cannot say. At any rate, I think there is a program called Disk Manager that will do what you require. Perhaps someone out there will be so kind as to provide the correct information if I have been speaking from within my lower intestine. --Another know-nothing opinion from the desk of D. Miller.