Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!rpi!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen
From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: CD-ROM documents (was Paperless Office)
Message-ID: <2973@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Date: 30 Nov 90 18:58:01 GMT
References: <0094070F.B370E000@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU> <1181@dms.UUCP>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.com (bill davidsen)
Organization: GE Corp R&D Center, Schenectady NY
Lines: 18

In article <1181@dms.UUCP> albaugh@dms.UUCP (Mike Albaugh) writes:

| BTW: I know about error correcting codes, etc, but the story from
| the audiophiles is that the little "correction light" (_If_ you have
| one) tends to light more and more often with age (of the disk), which
| perhaps explains why newer decks tend not to have them. "Don't lets alarm
| the users, now" :-). And a n-bit correction scheme with n-1 _known_ bad
| bits gets us a bit close to the edge...

  Or, if you have the software, look at the soft error count on a copy
of your latest backup tape to /dev/null. Just read through it and see
what the error count is.

  Having an error correcting device and driver is helpful, but I would
rather have better reliability at the front end.
-- 
bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
    VMS is a text-only adventure game. If you win you can use unix.