CompuServe Messages

Lon, What happens when you LL F is that some drives do "slip-sectoring" which invloves sort of moving block addresses around. What happens is that the LLFormat is just a tad different for each manufacturer and each model. So is you get a non-slip sector program on a slip secotr disk or Vice Versa, you end up mapping either critical parts of the disk as bad when they are not (like the place the RDB has to be) or because the drive only allows adding to the bad block list, and the slipping addresses are n ot handled right, you evnetually map the entire disk as bad. This is because, to your software the same bad block shows up with a different address each time you run the software due to the sector slipping scheme on the controller. I also found out the hard way but had a repair place locally that took me in and showed me the docs, hex dumps, SCSI commands differences between manuctureres. Othewise I'd still be blowing away hds with LL formats. If you are getting increasing errors the best thing to do is to take the drive to a repair place for cleaning and head aligment testing. Probably cost you about $75. If you take the disks that are giving you the errors they might also be able to salvage them as well as get and idea where your errors are coming from. wmc – via Autopilot!