Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcrware!mwca!bill
From: bill@mwca.UUCP (Bill Sheppard)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
Subject: Re: Bad.sector.list on HD-s?
Keywords: Bad sectors
Message-ID: <1821@mwca.UUCP>
Date: 11 Mar 91 18:24:00 GMT
References: <2899@hexagon.se> <1991Mar8.154709.24534@cbfsb.att.com>
Organization: Microware Systems Corp., Santa Clara, CA
Lines: 21

In article <2899@hexagon.se>, pa@hexagon.se (Peter Andersson) writes:
> 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.

If it is a true SCSI drive (as opposed to MFM or RLL w/Adaptec controller)
you don't need to worry about defects - SCSI is known as "perfect media",
where there are spare sectors on the disk, and any bad sector is automatically
remapped to one of the spare sectors.  The computer has no way of knowing
this is taking place - the firmware on the drive does it.  To the computer,
there are no bad sectors.

Again, this is only true for an embedded-SCSI drive.
-- 
 ##############################################################################
 # Bill Sheppard  --  bills@microware.com  --  {uunet,sun}!mcrware!mwca!bill  #
 # Microware Systems Corporation  ---  OS-9: Seven generations beyond OS/2!!  #
 ######Opinions expressed are my own, though you'd be wise to adopt them!######