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From: robert@hemingway (Robert Plamondon)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: beware of Micrografx Designer 3.0!!!!
Message-ID: <1990Sep26.013814.28382@hemingway>
Date: 26 Sep 90 01:38:14 GMT
References: <615@ncratl.Atlanta.NCR.COM> <2365@lectroid.sw.stratus.com> <1990Sep20.114534.27982@pdn.paradyne.com> <1990Sep21.204055.6132@amd.com> <1880@abvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: robert@hemingway.WEITEK.COM (Robert Plamondon)
Organization: WEITEK, Sunnyvale CA
Lines: 54

In article <1880@abvax.UUCP> jaz@icd.ab.com (Jack A. Zucker) writes:
>Well, friday I popped up dos in a window and tried to run a DOS program.
>I got the message, "Sector not found reading drive C:".

One possibility is that Windows is not a culprit in the sense that
it's trashing the disk, but instead it's simply using the disk more
than other applications, and is turning up more problems.

In UPGRADING AND REPAIRING PCS from Que Books (a wonderful book that
answers a lot of hardware questions), the author claims that
stepper-motor hard drives often need to have a low-level reformat
done every year or so, due to the poor lifetime tolerances and poor
mechanical tolerance in general.  Having a sector disappear is a
typical symptom.

Windows and windows applications create many large files (spooler
temporary files, swap files, backup files) during a session, so any
problems with the disk will be more likely to be turned up.

I have a lot of experience with dead hard disks because I've run a
BBS for almost five years, and I use cheap Seagate drives that don't
run forever (not that any of them do).  I also get them repaired the
first time they break, which give another 1-2 years of service out of
them.  After they break the second time, I throw them away.

But a "bad sector" error doesn't usually mean a broken disk; the disk
can be revivified more often than not by a low-level reformat.

I recommend:

1. Back up the entire hard disk with FASTBACK (or some other real
backup program; anything but BACKUP).

2. Do a low-level reformat of the disk.  The easy way is to get the
HFORMAT/HOPTIMUM disk from Paul Mace Software (available in many
software stores), which can reformat disks non-destructively by
reading a track, reformatting it, and writing the data back.  This
means you won't have to bother restoring from backups (though I'd
make the backup anyway, if I were you).  If you use the AT Advanced
Diagnostic Disk (I think that's the name -- I haven't used it in a
while), you have to do a low-level format, run FDISK, then run a DOS
FORMAT, then restore from backups.

3. If the disk refuses to behave itself, consider having it repaired
instead of junking it.  (If you're rich enough, replace it with
something bigger and faster.)  Don't buy a stepper-motor drive if you
can afford a voice-coil drive.  Voice-coil drives are far more
reliable.  Also faster.

	-- Robert

-- 
    Robert Plamondon
    robert@weitek.COM