Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!super!udel!gatech!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!CORY.BERKELEY.EDU!dillon
From: dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Self-repairing SCSI disks!
Message-ID: <8809300243.AA20500@cory.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 30 Sep 88 02:43:48 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Lines: 23

>>1. What causes this?
>
>	The validator process of the file system is running.

	Speaking of which, before I got my hard disk I was worried that
I would destroy it about as often as I screw up floppies.  Needless to say
this just didn't have me worried, it had me *very* worried.

	Fortunetly, after getting my HD, I have had no problems at all.  The
major reason is that, going through an external (SCSI) interface, it is
nearly impossible to destroy more than one sector in the worst of all
practical cases in a crash situation.  In fact, with SCSI, you never get
half-written-out sectors since incomplete SCSI commands produce error
codes.

	The main problem with the floppies, as we found out years ago (the
Delay(0) -> track <usually 40> destroyed problem), is that entire tracks can
be destroyed if the trackdisk.device goes bonkers in the latter situation
due to the fact that the MFM encoding is being done by the Amiga.  Also, if 
your Amiga crashes in the middle of writing a track out to floppy, you can
loose an entire track.

						-Matt