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From: mikeu@pro-magic.cts.com (Mike Ungerman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: Optimizing
Message-ID: <2966@crash.cts.com>
Date: 2 Jun 90 14:36:03 GMT
Sender: root@crash.cts.com
Lines: 37

In-Reply-To: message from z@pro-fishunt.cts.com

A low level format usually only needs to be done once.  As a part of the low
level format, most formatting software also does a check for bad blocks and
locks them out.

ProSel's bad block scan is a good thing to do anyway.  Right at first to check
to see if the formatting software did it's job properly, and periodically to
make sure that some blocks/sectors that might be "weak" haven't now gone bad.

In the IBM world there's a software package called OPTUNE which I run when I
have formatted an IBM drive.  It writes patterns many times over to each
sector on the drive and if there is a weak sector that would pass on a quick
check, it eventually locks it out.  I usually run this software for about
24-48 hours continuously.  I'm not aware of any software like this for the
Apple.

If you get bad blocks later in the life of the hard drive, and continue to get
new ones periodically, you may want to re-do a low level format again.  I have
done this a couple of times when troubleshooting crashed hard drives.  As long
as the drive is not physically bad (ie., crashed head or other mechanical
failure) it has usually salvaged the drive.

As for optimizing, I optimize using ProSel's Beachcomber every week.  But then
I'm running a bbs system that extensively shuffles around files all day. 
After optimizing you can definately see the access time improve.

The bad blocks you say you have sound like a lot.  If you have plenty of space
available and don't get any new ones, you may just want to leave it alone. 
But if it bugs you, back up your system, re-low level format and run the bad
block scan again and see if they're still there.
______________________________________________________________________________
Mike Ungerman                      |Proline:mikeu@pro-magic
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