Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!uunet!mitel!sce!cognos!bdeskin
From: bdeskin@cognos.uucp (Bob Deskin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: 2K of disk space lost?
Message-ID: <5654@cognos.UUCP>
Date: 23 Mar 89 12:53:38 GMT
References: <8903211617.AA27122@uk.ac.ucl.sm.uxm>
Reply-To: bdeskin@cognos.UUCP (Bob Deskin)
Organization: Cognos Inc., Ottawa, Canada
Lines: 31

In article <8903211617.AA27122@uk.ac.ucl.sm.uxm> andrew@uxm.sm.ucl.ac.UK (Andrew Dawson) writes:
>If I format a disk double sided from the desktop, it will have 80
>tracks of 9 sectors. One of these is the boot sector, and there are 2
>copies of the Fat Allocation Table (5 sectors each) and a root
>directory (7 sectors).
>
--> interesting stuff deletedd
>
>A Dfree() call on a TOS formatted disk suggests that the disk has 711
>clusters of which 709 are free (yet again suggesting that 2K has been
>used). I know that cluster numbers start at 2, but this isn't "used"
>space.
>
>Is this a TOS bug, or have I missed something? Anyone got any ideas?

This is in fact a TOS bug or more specifically GEMDOS if I recall. The
operating system "forgets" about the last two clusters on the disk. I have 
formatted a disk, written a series of 2K files, and sure enough the last
two clusters cannot be written to. A while back I posted the same question
as you just did to the net and got a response from Atari itself (I forget
who, sorry). They had thought of fixing it but the incompatibility 
between old and new versions would create too many problems. Looks like
we're stuck with it. 



-- 
Bob Deskin                             Cognos Incorporated   
(613) 738-1338 ext 5003                P.O. Box 9707
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