Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!news.cs.indiana.edu!maytag!xenitec!lemsys!clemon From: clemon@lemsys.UUCP (Craig Lemon) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware Subject: Re: Disk access errors. Message-ID: Date: 9 Jun 91 17:47:21 GMT References: <1921@richsun.cpg.trs.reuter.com> Organization: Not an Organization Lines: 55 In article <1921@richsun.cpg.trs.reuter.com> boi@richsun.cpg.trs.reuter.com writes: >Recently, I decided to run B.A.D. on my harddrive. I have two partitions >appeared as if there was an increase in disk access speed. But, since I >started accessing programs, I occasionally get disk errors. >The strange thing though is that the programs which encounter a disk >error while loading, eventually work if I just hit 'cancel' on the >disk error requester that pops up. The one which really baffles me is I too have similar problems. I didn't run bad or anything like that but I get reasonably frequenct read errors on my HD now. I can get them to go away by clicking on "retry" once or twice. When I view pictures or something and I used cancel there is some garbage in the picture (!). My Story: Some of you may remember my problem with my Quantum 105S and Hardframe 2000 (v1.5c). I have VERY poor performance with this setup. For a while I was getting 36K/s. Usually I'm about 114-300K/s depending on the phase of the moon. If anyone would like to discuss this further in E-Mail PLEASE mail me. I got the setup about 2 years ago and until about 6 months ago it was perfect (except for speed, it's always been slow). Then once in a while I'd notice a read error, click on 'Retry' (not cancel0 and it would continue. The frequency of these errors has increased somewhat and now there are specific files that I get these errors on (I've tracked them down). This would lead me to believe that there are some "weak" sectors on my drive or something. The Quantum drives are supposed to retry data errors 10 times or something before even letting the controller know that there is a problem. Why does the data sometimes come out perfectly and sometime I have to retry twice? It is never corrupted when I finally get it read and no software (disk editors) ever finds an error when I step through files. These errors are NEVER found by diagnostic software. I'd juse like to allocate the quasi-blocks and be done with it. Another effect that I noticed is the errors increase in frequency with the use of the file. For example I have an ~150K executeable called 'x' (lets say). When I cd to it's directory and run 'x', no problem. A second time, no problem. The third time I get one read error. The fourth time, two or three. If I leave the system alone for a minute (with out accessing anything else), and re-execute 'x', the error level will drop down. It doesn't always drop to a perfect read but maybe to only one error from three. What gives? I know of several files with these block in them and I think they're in the first half of my drive (first 500 cylinders somewhere). Is there a program to step through a FILE block-by-block and repeatedly read the blocks trying to get a read error? Any suggestions about either problem are greatly appreciated... -- Craig Lemon - Kitchener, Ontario. Amiga B2000 UUCPv1.13D. clemon@lemsys.UUCP lemsys!clemon@xenitec.on.ca | Please Mail any binaries xenitec!lemsys!clemon@watmath.uwaterloo.edu | to 'files' at this site ..!uunet!watmath!xenitec!lemsys!clemon | instead of 'clemon'