cdavis@oucsace.cs.OHIOU.EDU (Charles Davis) (04/24/91)
How can I tell Amiga DOS to mark a track on a floppy disk "allocated"? My friend has some floppies with errors on them and asked me if I knew how to tell DOS to "skip over" the bad tracks. I had an ol' C-64 years back, and remembered (not too fondly, at that :^) getting into a full-screen "disk editor" and manually marking off block as "allocated" in the BAM (Block Allocation Map) on the directory track sector 0 (what was that, track 18 or something like that? Does anyone out there remember that old stuff?) For myself, I would just scrap the disk and use another (what, $.39?), but my friend wants to still be able to use that disk. Would DiskSalv or some such utility "repair" the disk by marking-off the bad section of the disk???? Please forgive my naivity (sp?), but I have only had 1 of my floppies ever go bad on me (knock on wood!), and it was actually on an MSDOS machine at the time (yuk!! :( ) Please respond by e-mail, or a posting, for maybe some others out there would also be interested in this. Charles Michael Davis cdavis@oucsace.cs.ohiou.edu (No cute signature block! :^)
peterk@cbmger.UUCP (Peter Kittel GERMANY) (04/25/91)
In article <3229@oucsace.cs.OHIOU.EDU> cdavis@oucsace.cs.OHIOU.EDU (Charles Davis) writes: > >How can I tell Amiga DOS to mark a track on a floppy disk "allocated"? > >My friend has some floppies with errors on them and asked me if I knew how >to tell DOS to "skip over" the bad tracks. I had an ol' C-64 years back, >and remembered (not too fondly, at that :^) getting into a full-screen >"disk editor" and manually marking off block as "allocated" in the BAM >(Block Allocation Map) on the directory track sector 0 (what was that, track >18 or something like that? Does anyone out there remember that old stuff?) The mechanism is still the same, only the BAM is now called Bitmap. Sorry, I don't know a disk monitor with this (really nice) feature, that allows you to mark arbitrary blocks as allocated. Ok, there are many good disk monitors out and I don't know every of them, perhaps there is one with this. And it's also the same with validating: If the DOS decides that your disk has to be validated (there is no user command for this like in the old days, but the DOS recognizes certain errors and then starts the validating process), then your allocated block will be freed again. So you would have to do this procedure over again. Therefore the better way is to not only mark these blocks as allocated, but make up a whole file with these blocks (you have pointers to every block in the file header block). To do this by hand, you need deep knowledge about the disk structure to create that file header block correctly. Perhaps there exists a disk monitor which offers this service as a feature? >Please forgive my naivity (sp?), but I have only had 1 of my floppies ever >go bad on me (knock on wood!), and it was actually on an MSDOS machine at >the time (yuk!! :( ) Wait for a HD, then this issue may become even more biting :-). -- Best regards, Dr. Peter Kittel // E-Mail to \\ Only my personal opinions... Commodore Frankfurt, Germany \X/ {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!cbmger!peterk
mascot@bnr.ca (Scott Mason) (04/27/91)
>In article <3229@oucsace.cs.OHIOU.EDU> cdavis@oucsace.cs.OHIOU.EDU (Charles Davis) writes: > >How can I tell Amiga DOS to mark a track on a floppy disk "allocated"? > Wouldn't formatting the disk automatically mark off bad sectors? -- Sorry - no email privledges at present. Do not reply by email.
kilian@cinnet.com (Kilian Jacob) (04/28/91)
From article <1160@cbmger.UUCP>, by peterk@cbmger.UUCP (Peter Kittel GERMANY): > And it's also the same with validating: If the DOS decides that your > disk has to be validated (there is no user command for this like in > the old days, but the DOS recognizes certain errors and then starts > the validating process), then your allocated block will be freed again. > So you would have to do this procedure over again. > Therefore the better way is to not only mark these blocks as allocated, > but make up a whole file with these blocks (you have pointers to every > block in the file header block). To do this by hand, you need deep > knowledge about the disk structure to create that file header block > correctly. Perhaps there exists a disk monitor which offers this > service as a feature? > What's about integrating this feature in the format program and the disk validator? That shouldn't be that hard to do. -- /<ilian -- Kilian Jacob - Cincinnati, Ohio - VOICE: (513)-489-1891 UUCP: kilian@cinnet.com (or {uceng.uc.edu, ukma!spca6, uunet!sdrc}!cinnet!kilian