dck@houxj.UUCP (01/27/87)
The mail order company that I ordered a PC/AT-compatible from sent along a floppy disk that is labeled "hard disk utilities". It contains several files called DTCFMT, HDBOOT, SDBOOT, PARK, ALLPARK Does anyone know what they do? I didn't order a hard disk from them, and the system documentation doesn't say anything. Thanks in advance. David Kwong homxa!houxj!dck
madd@bucsb.bu.edu.UUCP (02/05/87)
In article <157@houxj.UUCP> dck@houxj.UUCP (D.KWONG) writes: >The mail order company that I ordered a PC/AT-compatible from >sent along a floppy disk that is labeled "hard disk utilities". >It contains several files called > DTCFMT, HDBOOT, SDBOOT, PARK, ALLPARK >Does anyone know what they do? DTCFMT should be a drive formatting utility. Probably low-level sector formatter. HDBOOT is a boot utility that is needed to set up a hard drive on early PC's (PC1's, I think, but it may be PC's in general). I have no idea what SDBOOT might do. PARK moves the heads on the hard drive to a safe section of the drive so that it won't hurt anything when you are moving the drive around. It should be used whenever you move your hard drive, just to be safe. ALLPARK sounds like a general parking utility; maybe one that parks every drive it can. On most of the hard drives I've installed, they've had similar utilities. Sometimes they're not even described in the documentation. The best way to find out what they do is try them -- if it's really destructive, it'll tell you so before reformatting your hard drive. Just to be safe, I'd back it up first, though. Maybe there are those out there who write unsafe programs. If you try out PARK and ALLPARK, chances are they'll come up with something like "heads moved beyond cylinder xxx" and the machine will hang. It waits for you to turn it off. Hope this is helpful. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% - Jim Frost * The Madd Hacker - UUCP: ..!harvard!bu-cs!bucsb!madd | ARPANET: madd@bucsb.bu.edu CSNET: madd%bucsb@bu-cs | BITNET: cscc71c@bostonu -------------------------------+---+------------------------------------ "Oh beer, oh beer." -- Me | [=(BEER) <- Bud the Beer (cheers!)