madd@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Jim Frost) (12/06/87)
In article <1802@cup.portal.com> Isaac_K_Rabinovitch@cup.portal.com writes: >Bob_Robert_Brody@cup.portal.com writes: >->Fact is, there are far more problems with the stupid RLL than with >->FASTBACK. You should get your assault straight. The culprit is the >->RLL, not FASTBACK. Use 'real' hardware and you'll find FASTBACK works >->just fine. >[...] >the onus is on Fastback's publishers to either make the product >work safely on RLL drives or make it clear that it shouldn't be used with >them. This is an all too common problem. Recently I purchased SoftLogic's Disk Optimizer (an unfragmenting utility) in order to unfragment our Micropolis 85Mb drive. When the utility arrived, I happily unwrapped it, read the manual (nicely written), installed it (nice installation system), ran their analyze program to see just how bad my disk was (ran great, nice job). I then brought our system into single-user mode (we have neat hardware :-) and ran the optimizer. The optimizer went through a variety of simple questions and began. It immediately stopped and reported that my disk did not hae 512-byte sectors. No kidding, I thought, it has 2048 byte sectors. Big deal. I called SoftLogic to find out what I could do about it. "Reformat using 512 byte sectors." Not bloody likely; it was done the way it was for a reason. I ended up sending the program back for a refund. Their refund policy is interesting. There is a restock charge, so you never get all your money back. I was somewhat perturbed at having to pay this because NOWHERE IN THEIR ADS OR DOCUMENTATION WAS THERE ANYTHING STATING THAT YOUR DRIVE MUST HAVE 512 BYTE SECTORS. The error message wasn't even in the book! It cost me postage and restock charges for a program that wouldn't work with the hardware and that I had no way of telling it would not work prior to purchase. Moral: Don't trust anything. If you have odd hardware (ie anything at all that isn't standard), ask ahead of time whether or not it will work and be sure that you get some sort of guarantee that it will work on your system before you purchase it. You'll save yourself hassles and money. I would be interested in other horror stories that came about because the software company failed to mention that their program wouldn't work on a particular configuration. BTW, if you have a 512-byte sector drive, I would highly recommend this program. It is extremely well done and their support was fast and efficient. Too bad that they didn't tell anyone that their program requires 512 byte sectors, though. jim frost madd@bu-it.bu.edu