haugj@pigs.UUCP (Joe Bob Willie) (09/01/88)
In article <3816@bsu-cs.UUCP> evm2y@watt.acc.virginia.edu (Ernest V. Mathews III) writes: >Spintest version 1.2, a free program from Gibson Research Corporation, >from 1988. This program measures the number of rotations needed to >read a track on your hard disk; if this number is much higher than 3, >it probably means your interleave is not correct. It also measures a >transfer rate for your hard disk in kilobytes of data moved per >second. this is not completely correct. very slow clones (4.77MHz 8088's) with very stupid controllers on very slow drives may require 5 or more rotations to read one track. you can not accurately infer information regarding your interleave from the number of rotations required to read a track of data. the maximum number of rotations could be as high as the number of sectors if you get the interleave incorrect. if you want to determine the correct interleave you will have to format the drive with several different interleave factors and spintest after each. four or five formats should provide sufficient information to determine the correct interleave. generally, the worst case is when you have an interleave factor one too few. in which case the sector you wish to read has always just passed under the heads and requires a full revolution to be ready again. you can see this behavior by starting your format at an interleave of 5 or 6 and decreasing by 1 until you see the jump in required revolutions. -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-The Beach Bum at The Big "D" Home for Wayward Hackers-=-=-=-=-=-= Very Long Address: John.F.Haugh@rpp386.dallas.tx.us Very Short Address: jfh@rpp386 "ANSI C: Just say no" -- Me