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From: hojo@cbnewsb.cb.att.com (HC Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
Subject: Re: Bad.sector.list on HD-s?
Summary: my formatter will pass a bad sector list to Adaptec 4000/4070
Keywords: Bad sectors
Message-ID: <1991Mar8.154709.24534@cbfsb.att.com>
Date: 8 Mar 91 15:47:09 GMT
References: <2899@hexagon.se>
Sender: news@cbfsb.att.com
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 31

In article <2899@hexagon.se>, pa@hexagon.se (Peter Andersson) writes:
> 
> Hello there!
> 
> I've just gotten hold of a 30 M hard disk and now here is the
> trouble. (The type or whatsoever is irrelevant.)
> 
> Background: After formatting, the fysical bad sector marking begins
> but the program can't find any bad one's even though there
> are some fabricial faults on it.
> 
> 
Most of the HD interfaces use the Adaptec Controllers.
4000A for MFM, 4070 for RLL.  A 30 meg drive is surely Rll.

The Adaptecs allow a list of bad sectors to be passed to them at format
time.  This is the only way to live with spectre and Minix partition.
Tos tries to get by, by "testing" for bad sectors, and mapping them out.
As you see its a poor scheme, at best.

All my drives come with Bad sector lists, and I wrote my own formatter
to utilize this information and format the drive.  It has worked well.

The formatter, and associated partitioner is available by EMAIL.



Howard Johnson
ATT BELL LABS
att!lzsc!hcj
hcj@lzsc.att.com