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From: raf@PRC.Unisys.COM (Ralph A. Foy)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Format Error question(s) & Testimonial
Keywords: format, error, question
Message-ID: <13211@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM>
Date: 19 Mar 90 19:14:18 GMT
Sender: news@PRC.Unisys.COM
Lines: 40

The Situation:
	A couple of times now, i've gotten errors while formatting a
floppy.  since I get disks for 0.49 each, i don't mind tossing them,
since it wouldn't be worth the effort to return them for a free
replacement.

Now the question:
	is there a way to use disks with an error? M*-DOS is able to mark
bad sectors, and was wondering if AmigaDOS would do the same.

Further complication:
	I had to reformat my hard drive, and a bad cylinder was found... I
got around it by just doing a "quick" format, but the idea of a bad
sector sitting out there has me a little worried... Again, any way to
handle this without re-prepping the drive?

Now, a testimonial:
  I encountered a hard disk problem this past weekend, compounded by
my ignorance of the Amiga file systemm I panicked.  After poring
through every manual and book i had, calling upon all my exprerience
with computers, and invoking all deities, saints, and demons in the
cosmos, i was able to restore just about everything, and now have the
drive nicely partitioned and organized (I had inherited the system, so
kept the original owner's setup).

  Once everything was up and running I compared the experience with
those I had with my old and dusty PC and realized how much better the
Amiga recovery was. If I had controlled my hysteria a little better,
it could have been a very straightforward and simple task.

  Another thing I realized is how much the shareware and other
utilities really make the Amiga environment!  For a while I had to
boot using the plain vanilla dos disk, and cringed in horror at how
slow the mouse was!

   So, folks--spread the word! Sure the Amiga ain't perfect, but it
IS a real alternative to M*-DOS and M*CINT*SH systems (btw, they're
not perfect either).

Ralph