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From: dhf@linus.mitre.org (David H. Friedman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Norton Utilities 5.0 won't low-level-format my disk
Message-ID: <120997@linus.mitre.org>
Date: 24 Sep 90 18:25:58 GMT
Reply-To: dhf@linus.UUCP (David H. Friedman)
Distribution: usa
Organization: The MITRE Corporation, Bedford MA
Lines: 20

. First of all, overdue thanks to the people who answered my inquiry a few
weeks ago regarding Norton 5.0 in comparison to SpinRite + Mace, etc. The
latest PC Magazine settled the question for me with a new-product review,
calling it superior to anything on the market including SpinRite and Mace,
although there are still a few rough edges.
  On the strength of this I bought Norton 5.0 and tried defragmenting my
files and consolidating the free disk space. No problems. But when I ran
the Calibrate utility, which is supposed to find the best interleave ratio,
do a low-level format, etc., it told me my disk controller is one of those
that try to "trick" DOS into allowing a max partition of 64 Mb by simply
doubling the sector size, with the standard 2 bytes per FAT entry. (My disk
is a 42 Mb ST251-1, formatted as a single DOS partition.) In short, Calibrate
will not attempt a low-level format on disks with sector-translating, ESDI
and other "funny" controllers, although it will perform diagnostic functions.
  My question now is, what do I do further down the road when my disk starts
to show signs of needing a SpinRite-style low-level format? Fortunately it's
nowhere near that state yet, but I would like to be ready when it gets there.
As before, any advice will be appreciated, and especially helpful replies
will be posted to the net.

dhf@linus.UUCP (David H. Friedman, The MITRE Corporation, Bedford, MA 01730)