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From: cam2@ur-tut.UUCP (Craig McGowan)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Hyper Flame... (long)
Message-ID: <240@ur-tut.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 19-Nov-85 22:29:56 EST
Article-I.D.: ur-tut.240
Posted: Tue Nov 19 22:29:56 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 23-Nov-85 01:27:53 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: Univ. of Rochester Computing Center
Lines: 30

I recently purchased a HyperDrive 20, and although I am in general quite
happy with it, I thought I'd share this experience with the net community.

While I was using my HyperDrive last friday it began to act quite flakey.  It
would crash occasionally, usually when a program was opened.  I began to
suspect that the problem was hardware related, so I ran the disk check program.
Sure enough, there were a number of bad sectors on the disk.  At this point I
resorted to reading the manual.

It was suggested that I backup the disk (I had already) then initialize.  This
did not help: programs still crashed, bad blocks were still there.  Next step:
format the disk.  This is where things get really interesting.

The format command gave a message saying I had a hardware problem - see my
dealer.  I did.  They did not know the answer, so they called General Computer.
GCC put us on hold for about 1/2 hour, then said they were closing up shop for
the weekend, they would call back.  They did.  

The software *always* reports a hardware error when the format command is
chosen, even if there is nothing wrong with the drive!!!

You can format the disk if you use some command-option key combination when
selecting format.  This overrides the system password, and is not documented
in the manual.  It is amazing to me that no one even tried to format a disk
using the format command.  At least I have my system back now, I shudder to
think how long a *real* hardware problem would take to solve.

Craig McGowan
uucp:   ...!{ seismo | allegra | decvax )!rochester!mcgowan
arpa:   mcgowan@rochester