Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!uunet!clyde.concordia.ca!ccu.umanitoba.ca!umcarls9
From: umcarls9@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Charles Carlson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Re: Serial safety; HD inteleave
Message-ID: <1990Oct4.192735.8812@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
Date: 4 Oct 90 19:27:35 GMT
References: <1990Sep20.123824@miguel.llnl.gov> <1990Sep25.042714.25505@ccu.umanitoba.ca> <1990Sep30.060736.28468@dhw68k.cts.com>
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
Lines: 31

In article <1990Sep30.060736.28468@dhw68k.cts.com> emmayche@dhw68k.cts.com (Mark Hartman) writes:
>In article <1990Sep25.042714.25505@ccu.umanitoba.ca>,
>umcarls9@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Charles Carlson) writes:
>
>>Does anyone know if Norton Utilities allows you to look at/change the
>>interleave without reformatting?
>
>Generally speaking, this is not possible to do.  Interleaving describes
>the number of sectors which are read out of the number that pass beneath
>the r/w heads.  So, for example, an interleave of 1:3 takes three turns
>of the disk to read the entire track.  Needless to say, the sectors are
>positioned in a like manner; i.e., sector "1" and sector "2" have two
>other physical sectors between them.
>
>While I suppose you *could* change the interleave factor, the amount of
>data shuffling you'd have to do to make it work properly really wouldn't
>be worth the hassle.

Of course its possible to do!  There are countless programs available for the
PC to do it!  
What data shuffling are you talking about?  All you simply have to do is:
1) read the track into memory
2) reformat track to desired interleave
3) write data back to disk.
 
Which would be quicker and easier?  That or:
1) backing up drive <which you should do anyways before something like this>
2) reformat old drive
3) restore all the data.

Charles