jdudeck@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (John R. Dudeck) (09/27/90)
I have used SpinRite II (version 1.1, latest update) on two different Toshiba 1600's. On the first one, it went part way through "scrubbing", and then hung. I started it again, and it made it further. After about 4 passes it finally succeeded in doing the whole surface (42 mb, "native" disk geometry, Toshiba release of MS-DOS 4.01). On the second T1600 it gets part way through the Data Transfer test (before the scrubbing starts) and starts making seek noises like when you have a read error. It seeks about 3 times and hangs, leaving the C: drive light on. (same drive type as the first one). On the second one, I did find that one track of the drive was not formatted. I don't know who did the low level formatting, and I can't find how to do it anywhere. I wrote a quick assembly language program to format the one track, which worked. Norton Disk Doctor gives the drive a clean bill of health. But SpinRite still hangs. I have used SpinRite on several other systems, and have never had any problems except on the T1600. Their advertising says you can throw anything at it that spins. Apparently not *anything* (yet). I haven't felt like spending the money to phone Gibson, so I thought I would try the net. 1. How do you low-level format a T1600? 2. Why does SpinRite have trouble with the T1600? -- John Dudeck "Nothing is foolproof, because jdudeck@Polyslo.CalPoly.Edu fools are so ingenious." ESL: 62013975 Tel: 805-545-9549 -- quote from PC Mag.