Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!comp.vuw.ac.nz!massey.ac.nz!E.Ireland
From: E.Ireland@massey.ac.nz (Evan Ireland)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Bad tracks / flaw maps
Message-ID: <403sis-b@massey.ac.nz>
Date: 24 Sep 90 22:35:35 GMT
Reply-To: E.Ireland@massey.ac.nz
Organization: Information Sciences, Massey University, New Zealand
Lines: 19
Sender:

I have an enquiry from a friend who wants to know where information on
bad tracks (disk defects) is stored.  Programs suxh as Ontrack's Disk
Manager (DM) can scan a hard disk for bad sectors, and create a flaw
map file which specifies the bad tracks.

The question is: how is this bad track information made known to DOS?

I suspect that all clusters on a bad track are marked as bad clusters
(FF7 or FFF7 cluster entry value in the FAT), and no other information
on bad tracks is stored on the disk.

Am I correct, or is additional information about bad tracks stored
somewhere on the disk?

Please reply by email, as I don't always have time to read this
newsgroup, and so I may miss the response.

				  Evan Ireland (E.Ireland@massey.ac.nz),
School of Information Sciences, Massey University, Palmerston North, NZ.