Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!husc6!ogccse!blake!djo7613
From: djo7613@blake.acs.washington.edu (Dick O'Connor)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: RLL drives and interleave factors
Keywords: RLL, hard disk drives, interleave, HDTST125, SPINTEST
Message-ID: <1382@blake.acs.washington.edu>
Date: 29 Mar 89 16:22:18 GMT
Organization: Univ of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 26

I'm trying to determine what interleave the Seagate ST238 30 MB RLL hard
disk drive in my Zenith Z159 XT-compatible is set to.  There are a number
of commercial products that I could buy to do this and many other useful
hard disk tests.  I was hoping to be able to determine my current interleave
setting using something free in order to see if it's going to be a 
worthwhile expense.

I've downloaded two products from SIMTEL20 that do interleave testing.
One is  a package from Gibson Research which includes a program called
SPINTEST, which told me that my drive (using a Seagate controller - not
sure what the model number is) was running at a 22:1 interleave (Eek!).
The other product, a program written by Jim Bracking and distributed
in an archive called HDTST125, told me the interleave was 4:1 and that I
could get slightly better performance by re-interleaving at 5:1.

Both packages seem RLL-aware.  Question is, who's right?  Maybe I need to
find a *third* package, and go for 2 falls out of 3...

Dick O'Connor
Washington Department of Fisheries
Olympia, Washington  98504
Internet Mail: djo7613@blake.acs.washington.edu
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DISCLAIMER:  I speak only for myself, not for the Department.  Here, anyway!
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               So long, and thanks from all the fish...