larrys@uunet.uu.net (02/22/90)
Is there any information on the relative merits of the OS resident 4.0 format and the standalone disk diag programs? I have found some practical differences, for example, that diag will format and surface analyze faster, and that diag will come up when you're in a hurry. Fortunately, on a Sun-3, you can copy diag and other standalone programs into a directory called /stand on the 4.0 system and still use diag when you are in a hurry. So are there any real technical advantages to format over diag -- or are all the advantages in diag?
weber@cg-atla.agfa.com (Jeff Weber) (02/23/90)
DIAG was no great piece of work but it was faster to use and was better at non-Sun disks (like it didn't crash). You could get more work out with DIAG because you didn't have to mess with loading the kernel all the time. FORMAT is not as useful (read: j-u-n-k) as DIAG and what is worse it changes between OS releases and hardware platforms! There is no excuse for that from a company like Sun. FORMAT does have a useful feature in format.dat (but does it have to be as fragile?). If I had to (or could) choose between to the two I'd opt for the older DIAG based on its more solid performance and quicker to loadup and use. The latter may not be a problem if you only run it once when you install the system but if you make your living with it..... I cannot say that the technical differences are there (formatted is formatted) but DIAG was better at doing the right thing and telling what was going on.
dupuy@cs.columbia.edu (02/27/90)
With all this format-bashing I feel I have to say something in its defense. While it may be inconvenient to load MUNIX just to run format, I almost never do this myself. It's much easier to boot a machine diskless, with a GENERIC kernel, and run format from that, with all the conveniences of Unix for saving and loading defect lists, etc. It's also very nice not to have to run single-user (i.e. unavailable) overnight when formatting a disk and running surface analysis. It would be nice if format were a bit more robust, and for those poor folks without servers to boot from, it might be convenient to combine the MUNIX and miniroot stages, so that suninstall could be run from MUNIX, or at least add dump and restore to the set of MUNIX utilities. inet: dupuy@cs.columbia.edu uucp: ...!rutgers!cs.columbia.edu!dupuy