Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!wuarchive!psuvax1!rutgers!att!mcdchg!ddsw1!ddsw1!karl
From: karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: low level format
Message-ID: <2580348c:7338.1comp.ibmpc;1@ddsw1.MCS.COM>
Date: 8 Dec 89 23:00:04 GMT
References: <28312@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Lines: 38

>Item 7338 (0 resps) by phil at diablo.amd.com on Fri 08 Dec 89 11:21
>[<No Identification>]    Subject: low level format
>(20 lines)
>
>
>I'm looking for some suggestions on low level formatters and bad block
>handling. My WD1006 does have a formatter in its controller BIOS but
>some of my other machines don't have this feature. Also I'm not very
>impressed with the WD's formatter. On some disks it gets an error
>after doing a verify or defect scan for a while (reading an IO
>register?) and quits. (so I don't use those disks but I wish I could.)

Yuck.  Your disk has some >serious< problems with retaining information if
you get an I/O error in the registers.  I've seen this too, and if you get
a list of the codes (call WD or get a manual for details) you'll find that
most of them are of the ilk "seek not completed" or "no data address mark"
on disk (!)

>Spinrite II is neat but it only does REformatting. It also sometimes
>gets stuck handling a bad block and never goes on or stops for ESC.  I
>got Disk Technician Advanced only to find it can't deal with
>partitions > 32 megabytes.  (what bozos!) I had trouble with dm also.
>I wasn't sure that the bad blocks it found were being seen by DOS.
>(I'm pretty sure Spinrite II didn't cooperate with it anyway.) Any
>other ideas? 

DM should work IF it is the full (not just "one manufacturer") version.  So
should Speedstor (Storage Dimensions).  We use both.

Bad blocks should just be marked as defective (the data address mark is
changed to do this).  An attempted read on that sector then returns "deleted
data record" in the flags, which DOS will catch during the high level format
and mark the block as unavailable.

--
Karl Denninger (karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM, <well-connected>!ddsw1!karl)
Public Access Data Line: [+1 708 566-8911], Voice: [+1 708 566-8910]
Macro Computer Solutions, Inc.  "Quality Solutions at a Fair Price"