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From: ajbennett@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu (Andrew Bennett @ Miami University, Ohio)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit
Subject: Re: Trouble with old disks...
Message-ID: <3511.279f4aa1@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu>
Date: 25 Jan 91 01:59:13 GMT
References: <36189@netnews.upenn.edu>
Distribution: na
Lines: 30

In article <36189@netnews.upenn.edu>, yoshida@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Dan P. Yoshida) writes:
> Recently I've been attempting to backup some of my atari disks (some
> of which were originally written to in the early 80's). On some of the
> disks I've been getting sector read errors (I was using Copymate sector
> copier from ANTIC) that generate a "G4" error on my Indus GT drive.
> It seems that the drive tries to read the sector several times, but
> only sometimes can it eventually read the information (ie, it's NOT a
> bad sector).
>   Does anyone know of a utility that will allow me to specify a certain
> sector to be continually looked at until the information is successfully
> read? Will cleaning my drive read/write head help?
> 
> BTW - The disks are regular DOS 2 formatted disks with binary files
>       on them (in case someone thought that the errors were from
>       the drive encountering tricky copy-protection).
> 

SmartDOS 6.1 (and higher) has a nifty function that you can reset the retry
times to read a sector.  If you think 9 times could do it, then see if you
can get yourself a copy.  SmartDOS will work in SD and DD.  I thought I heard
a rumor of a version working in HD, but never saw it.

Andrew
 
  ****************************************************************************
  **   Andrew Bennett         ajbennett@miavx1.bitnet  [MIAVX1::AJBENNETT]  **
  **   Miami University       ajbennett@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu               **
  **   Oxford, Ohio           ab55sanu@miamiu.bitnet                        **
  **   (not in Florida)       ab55sanu@miamiu.acs.muohio.edu                **
  ****************************************************************************