dhf@linus.mitre.org (David H. Friedman) (09/25/90)
. First of all, overdue thanks to the people who answered my inquiry a few weeks ago regarding Norton 5.0 in comparison to SpinRite + Mace, etc. The latest PC Magazine settled the question for me with a new-product review, calling it superior to anything on the market including SpinRite and Mace, although there are still a few rough edges. On the strength of this I bought Norton 5.0 and tried defragmenting my files and consolidating the free disk space. No problems. But when I ran the Calibrate utility, which is supposed to find the best interleave ratio, do a low-level format, etc., it told me my disk controller is one of those that try to "trick" DOS into allowing a max partition of 64 Mb by simply doubling the sector size, with the standard 2 bytes per FAT entry. (My disk is a 42 Mb ST251-1, formatted as a single DOS partition.) In short, Calibrate will not attempt a low-level format on disks with sector-translating, ESDI and other "funny" controllers, although it will perform diagnostic functions. My question now is, what do I do further down the road when my disk starts to show signs of needing a SpinRite-style low-level format? Fortunately it's nowhere near that state yet, but I would like to be ready when it gets there. As before, any advice will be appreciated, and especially helpful replies will be posted to the net. dhf@linus.UUCP (David H. Friedman, The MITRE Corporation, Bedford, MA 01730)
timur@seas.gwu.edu (The Time Traveler) (09/25/90)
I heard that it is not possible to handle these "funky" controllers because of all this sector-translation they do. I have a PS/2 70 with a 120MB drive, and only the Reference Disk can do a low-level format. Software like Spinrite and Disk Technician can't deal with this. I don't know whether it is at all possible to change the interleave, put a low-level format is at least possible. It might be impractical to include it in any market software, however. In short, these advanced disk repair utilities are becoming more and more useless, since the number of drives incompatible with them increase. Unfortunately, I have yet to hear an explanation on this subject that sounds complete and informative. Any takers?
dlow@hpspcoi.HP.COM (Danny Low) (09/25/90)
>(David H. Friedman) >In short, Calibrate >will not attempt a low-level format on disks with sector-translating, ESDI >and other "funny" controllers, although it will perform diagnostic functions. > My question now is, what do I do further down the road when my disk starts >to show signs of needing a SpinRite-style low-level format? All the disk repair programs such as Spinrite et. al. will NOT handle controllers that are "intelligent" and allow logical I/O (e.g. SCSI controllers). You have a funny semi-intelligent controller from your posting. If it is popular, one of the disk repair programs might support it as a special case. Unfortunately, this lack of a feature is not well publicized and the list of exceptions that are handled tend to be very short. Danny Low "Question Authority and the Authorities will question You" Valley of Hearts Delight, Silicon Valley HP SPCD dlow%hpspcoi@hplabs.hp.com ...!hplabs!hpspcoi!dlow
kabra437@pallas.athenanet.com (Ken Abrams) (09/28/90)
In article <15160009@hpspcoi.HP.COM> dlow@hpspcoi.HP.COM (Danny Low) writes: >>(David H. Friedman) >>In short, Calibrate >>will not attempt a low-level format on disks with sector-translating, ESDI >>and other "funny" controllers, although it will perform diagnostic functions. >> My question now is, what do I do further down the road when my disk starts >>to show signs of needing a SpinRite-style low-level format? > If you have a "modern" drive that uses voice coil technology (or better) to provide head positioning, it is possible that you will never be in the position to require such a fix. These low level formatting utilities are much more useful (and necessary) for the older MFM drives; expecially the ones that use step motors for head positioning. The alternative is to do it the old way. That is, back up the drive and then do a destructive low level format. The means to do that varies with disk type and maufacturer. -- ======================================================== Ken Abrams uunet!pallas!kabra437 Illinois Bell kabra437@athenanet.com Springfield (voice) 217-753-7965
thorh@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Thor Hallen) (09/28/90)
The Norton calibrate utility will not reformat a sector translating drive but it will mark any bad sectors as unusable. Thor Hallen Tektronix, Inc.
CHAS@MTUS5.BITNET (Chas. Thompson) (10/12/90)
The Newest Spinrite II v.1.1 handels several intelegent controllers now