greg@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Gregory Nowak) (11/21/88)
A friend of mine has a Seagate 20MB hard disk in a Leading Edge clone.
She has been having some problems with data on the disk -- for
example, when she tries to run Wordperfect, she'll get a Read error;
on a retry she'll get a General Failure error. Since wordperfect
occasionally balks if a directory (not its own) is bad, I tried doing
an xtree /a to see if all the directories would show up. It worked
fone, and then so did wordperfect. The next day WP was down again, I
did a "recover" on it, and it had bad sectors. Her question is, how do
sectors go bad in a program that's occupied the same disk space for a
year? And, is this a self-propagating problem; i.e., is simply
ignoring it actively bad for the disk, or is this simply a result of
wear and tear on the disk that one might as well put up with if one is
making backups?
Thanks,
--
rutgers!phoenix.princeton.edu!greg Gregory A Nowak/Phoenix Gang/Princeton NJ
"Take 2*3*5*7*11*13. It's divisible by 59." --Matt Crawfordmatt@nbires.nbi.com (Matthew Meighan) (11/22/88)
In <4523@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>, greg@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Gregory Nowak) says: > A friend of mine has a Seagate 20MB hard disk in a Leading Edge clone. > She has been having some problems with data on the disk -- for > example, when she tries to run Wordperfect, she'll get a Read error; > on a retry she'll get a General Failure error. > [stuff deleted] The next day WP was down again, I > did a "recover" on it, and it had bad sectors. Her question is, how do > sectors go bad in a program that's occupied the same disk space for a > year? And, is this a self-propagating problem; i.e., is simply > ignoring it actively bad for the disk, or is this simply a result of > wear and tear on the disk that one might as well put up with if one is > making backups? I had the same problem with a Seagate 20MB disk, that is, sectors going bad at random every week or so. I did a low-level (physical) format on the disk and the problem went away. The drive ran fine for a couple of years after that. If you have a Western Ditital controller, you can do a low-level format by going into debug and typing - g=C800:05 <cr> at the debug prompt. Of course, this will blow away all data on the disk, so do a backup first. Otherwise, whoever sold you the drive and/or controller should be able to tell you how to do the physical format.
doc@holin.ATT.COM (David Mundhenk) (11/22/88)
In article <4523@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>, greg@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Gregory Nowak) writes: > > A friend of mine has a Seagate 20MB hard disk in a Leading Edge clone. > She has been having some problems with data on the disk ...... > ..... > ignoring it actively bad for the disk, or is this simply a result of > wear and tear on the disk that one might as well put up with if one is > making backups? I am not an expert on hard drives, but since you mention that backups have been done, the first thing I would try is to re-do the low level format, partitioning and DOS format, then re-load everything. You might want to try Norton Utilities to see if it finds any problems. Another possibility is a new software product called "SpinRite", which will optimize your interleave and re-low level format the drive without having to restore everything. (I am in no way affiliated with any marketers of the above software) -Dave "Credo quia absurdum" ------------------------------------------------------------------ /^, , , . . , , , , , / } _, , , . __/ | /| / /| /| , , __, __/ /_ _, __, /_ /_./ (_l |/ / /_/ |/ |/. / |/ | /_/ / / /_/ / / /_ / / /\ Disclaimer: My opinions do not reflect those of anyone I work for or with, or anyone who does not look like me.
ljw@whuxr.ATT.COM (WU) (11/23/88)
In article <4523@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>, greg@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Gregory Nowak) writes: > Her question is, how do > sectors go bad in a program that's occupied the same disk space for a > year? And, is this a self-propagating problem; i.e., is simply > ignoring it actively bad for the disk, or is this simply a result of > wear and tear on the disk that one might as well put up with if one is > making backups? i started using a package called spinrite recently (reviewed in november byte). this package allegedly "maximises disk performance" and "minimises problems." in their doc, the implication is that as a drive "ages" the low level track formatting does not get rewritten. as the drive goes "out of spec" and/or alignment, defects may become usable while previously good spots may become bad. i used this on one of my drives that was starting to get flakey in spots (no bad tracks from manufacturer). sure enough, some of the tracks i mapped out were bad while some were returned to use after a re-write of the low level track format. in addition, a few other tracks were marked as bad. i haven't had any long term experience with spinrite, but i found it to be user friendly and it seemed to get the job done. les wu p.s. i have no connection with gibson research corp. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Les J. Wu AT&T Bell Laboratories (UUCP) att!whuxr!ljw One Whippany Road (arpa) ljw!whuxr@research.att.com WH 2F-316 Whippany, NJ 07981 *** STANDARD DISCLAIMERS APPLY *** Tel: (201)386-3409 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------