david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) (03/08/89)
A question for the assembled masses, one which I don't know a proper
newsgroup in which to post the question.
Short version:
I want to know what sorts of software is available for testing hard
disks specifically for finding bad blocks, but general testing would be
good as well.
Long version:
I have a hard disk which I'm trying to use on an Amiga 2000. (It's one
of those CDC Wren II's which the guy in Albany is selling). I have an
2090A controllor board and the standard Amiga DOS software for PREP'ing
and FORMAT'ing disks. The problem is that during the format the
machine hangs at Cyl 101 in a way which makes me think it's a bad
block. The machine locks up but not completely -- window's can be
brought to the front and the mouse moves for instance, but typed input
to the CLI and double clicking on icons don't do the normal things --
as if the machine were heavily loaded doing something. I can easily
format this drive on other computers so that's not a problem, and I
have very carefully gone over the cables.
This appears to be a case of differing levels of pickiness on format
programs between two computers. The drive itself works fine.
On my Unix PC it zips right through the format step and the 'Surface
Test' goes on and finds a few bad blocks. Each time through the S.T.
it might get lucky and find a few bad blocks. Most of the time it only
finds bad blocks that it's already found. It hasn't found all the bad
blocks yet (This is after 2 days of testing) listed in the table pasted
to the drive, and it's found a few *NOT* listed.
(BTW, anybody know an incantation to give the 'expert' mode of the 7300
diagnostics so that it'll repeatadly do the surface test without asking
questions? I tried "[<repeat-count>]<test-number>,<sub-test-number>"
without luck.)
The surface test goes through each block writing some fixed (and
unchangeable) pattern to each block, and if it reads something
different back then it declares it a bad block. This doesn't seem very
thorough to me.
What I want is a program which does the same sort of thing but is more
thorough. Maybe doing each block repeatadly. Whatever is necessary so
that it'll find all/most of the bad blocks on one pass. Also if it
could run unattended so that I don't have to type a couple things on
the console every hour or two would be really nice.
If it's only available for IBM PC type computers I'll grin and bear it
through the pains of asking a friend to borrow one of his computers :-)
--
<-- David Herron; an MMDF guy <david@ms.uky.edu>
<-- ska: David le casse\*' {rutgers,uunet}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET
<-- Now I know how Zonker felt when he graduated ...
<-- Stop! Wait! I didn't mean to!billsey@agora.UUCP (Bill Seymour) (03/13/89)
From article <11195@s.ms.uky.edu:, by david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae):
: A question for the assembled masses, one which I don't know a proper
: newsgroup in which to post the question.
:
: Short version: [Deleted]
: Long version: [Mostly deleted]
:
: I have a hard disk which I'm trying to use on an Amiga 2000. (It's one
: of those CDC Wren II's which the guy in Albany is selling). I have an
: 2090A controllor board and the standard Amiga DOS software for PREP'ing
: and FORMAT'ing disks. The problem is that during the format the
: machine hangs at Cyl 101 in a way which makes me think it's a bad
: block.
You could laways find someone with one of the other SCSI controllers
for the Amiga that *does* have a real low-level formatting routine... I
know that the 2090 doesn't yet. Where you might run into problems is if
the Wren II has a different method for handling bad blocks than other
controllers... If the Wren II is compatible with one of the other supported
drives, you should be able to do a real clean format. I use the Supra on
my system, and there are about 20-30 drive/controller combos supported
with a very good low-level format routine.
: <-- David Herron; an MMDF guy <david@ms.uky.edu:
: <-- ska: David le casse\*' {rutgers,uunet}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET
: <-- Now I know how Zonker felt when he graduated ...
: <-- Stop! Wait! I didn't mean to!
--
-Bill Seymour ...tektronix!reed!percival!agora!billsey
...tektronix!sequent!blowpig!billsey
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