Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!uwvax!speedy!thaler
From: thaler@speedy.cs.wisc.edu (Maurice Thaler)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: formatting 3.5' disks
Summary: Use ARC's CRC for test
Message-ID: <6214@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
Date: 8 Sep 88 13:43:34 GMT
References: <361@dcscg1.UUCP> <101000002@hpcvlx.HP.COM>
Sender: news@spool.cs.wisc.edu
Reply-To: thaler@speedy.cs.wisc.edu (Maurice Thaler)
Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept
Lines: 13
Distribution:USA




I just did the old solder iron trick last night. First I tried to
format the floppy w/ no arguments. It came back w/ BAD TRACK 0.
After the "operation", it formatted to 1.44M w/ no problems. I am
filling it w/ ARC files. To check if the floppy is degrading, all
I have to do is PKXARC /T *  it will check the contents of each file
inside the ARC to a crc on each file. If there is any damage to
the floppy, it will show up immediately. I will do this on a few
more floppies and report back if errors start creeping in. So far,
so good though.  This reminds me of the old single sided floppy days.
I very rarely found a SS/DD that did not format perfectly to DS/DD.