CompuServe Messages

Larry, No, it doesn't work on SCSI disks…for a simple reason. When the program "asks" for sector 123, the controller on the drive can give any sector on the drive. Part of the SCSI "standard" is that the controller on the drive can re-map any sector to any other sector on the disk. (this presumes the drive manufacturer has implemented this option, some haven't…to the best of my knowledge…Quantum has) This remapping can occur during a normal write operation or during the low level format (again…depending on the actual command used to the controller on the disk). It normally will not occur on a read operation, since if the drive can't read a sector…it has no way to re-create the data and remap it to a good sector. There's a program in LIB 13 called HDTEST.LZH that I wrote, it's a quick and dirty test program that is intended for ST506 type hard drives, but will work with any drive (including floppies). In the case of a SCSI drive, while it will report a cylinder, head and byte offset…these numbers can NOT be trusted. But it will at least tell you that you in fact, have a bad sector on the disk. If you get no errors, the disk controller is able to read all the sectors on the disk. The test program doesn't care about, or use the FileSystem, so while it may be able to read the data…the filesystem (DOS) may not be able to understand it (corrupt data problem). A simple re-format will fix that problem. If the test program shows errors, there's another program in LIB 14 called SFMT.ARC (which I also wrote) that will ATTEMPT a low level format of the drive. It tells the drive to re-format and map out any bad sectors it finds during the format. After that, an AmigaDOS format should be done. Be aware, a low level format can take quite a while for a large drive, 20 to 30 minutes on a 300 Meg drive would not be unusual. Don