Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!jarthur!uunet!brunix!agm
From: agm@cs.brown.edu (Axel Merk)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: NeXTStep 2.0 Completed
Summary: low-level vs high-level formatting
Message-ID: <57202@brunix.UUCP>
Date: 21 Nov 90 18:26:42 GMT
References: <352@atncpc.UUCP>
Sender: news@brunix.UUCP
Reply-To: agm@cs.brown.edu (Axel Merk)
Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science
Lines: 31

In article <352@atncpc.UUCP> bruce@atncpc.UUCP (Bruce Henderson) writes:
>[...]
>Then the workspace manager started.  An alert came up saying it was 
>unreadable (the Wren V), and would I like to format it?  I clicked 
>yes.  3 Minutes later the Workspace mounted it.  It works.... That
>simple.... It just works....
>
>[...]
>Bruce
I don't think we'll have to go into this discussion again:
The NeXT always provided relatively easy means of high-level
formatting drives (as you point out, it's even easier now as it is
automized and menu-oriented). This will not, however, low-level format
the drives. 

Result: Your drive will work fine if you only high-level format it. If
you want to get the maximum out of your drive, however, you might want
to make sure that the cache is set on, the automatic error
reallocation is set on, and that the sector size is set to 1024 bytes
per sector. In addition, the error allocation scheme may either be set
to optimize speed or space. 

If any of that is not set to your desires, low-level format the drive. 

Axel,
co-author of TheFormatter
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