[comp.os.vms] "too many" bad blocks on a 1.2GByte disk

jlfitz@genie.UUCP (James Fitzgerald) (08/04/90)

   I have two CDC 9720-1230 disks connected to an Emulex SC7003.  
The SC7003 board sits in a V-Master, which sits in a VAX 8650
running VMS 5.3-1. I've applied Emulex's patch to the DRDRIVER; and
the 9720's look like RM05's with about 2M blocks of space.
    The bad news is that I cannot mark more than about 75 bad blocks.  
If ANALYZE/MEDIA/EXERCISE=FULL finds more than 75 bad blocks,
INITIALIZE fails with "INIT-F-MAXBAD."  
    DEC's software info. network has an article describing this 
problem.  It says that bad blocks are allocated to "DRB0:[000000]BADBLK.SYS"
and that this file may not have an extension file header.  Thus the 
number of bad blocks is limited to the number of retreival pointers
that one file header can store.

    I have two questions.
       1 - Is anyone else in the same boat?  (Misery loves company. -right)
       2 - (more to the point)  Has anyone worked around this limitation?

					Thanks
					Jim Fitzgerald
					e-mail- jlfitz@genie.gene.com