Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!sun-barr!newstop!sun!pepper!cmcmanis From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Disk Alignment Summary: validation is the key Keywords: gronk gronk... Message-ID: <122819@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> Date: 21 Aug 89 19:22:42 GMT References: Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis) Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View Lines: 26 (George Armhold) writes: > ... Sometimes when I try to boot from a Workbench disk the >machine just grinds away at the disk. It takes about 5 minutes to boot >from a disk that usually boots in 3. If I try booting a few times the >problem sometimes goes away. ... What your problem is, is called disk validation. When you write to an Amiga floppy the "bitmap" which shows which blocks are free on the floppy gets updated but not initially written. (This is an optimizing solution to prevent having to write all the time to the disk) Anyway, after a your last write to the disk *WAIT 3 SECONDS*, the disk will suddenly write again! That is the handler flushing the bitmap back to the disk. If you don't wait and pop out the disk, there won't be anything wrong with it, rather it will just not be validated. The next time you pop it into a drive to boot or just read it, the handler will note that it isn't validated an then proceed to read *EVERY* directory and file header to make sure the bit map is correct. This can take a noticebly long time especially if you have lots of files on the disk. Once it's been validated thought you won't have to validate it again (until it has been written to) and so reboots from that point on will happen much more quickly. --Chuck McManis uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you. "A most excellent barbarian ... Genghis Kahn!"