CompuServe Messages

Steven, When a disk is not validated, the computer usually will not read or write on the disk until the validation is complete. When you try to access an unvalidated disk, it usually just spins and spins. All this time, the operating system is working the disk over, patching up the bitmap (marking the sectors that are free, and those in use) so the file system can use only the free sectors when you write to the disk. It sometimes takes a very long time if you have lots of things on the disk. If your drive is not doing this automatically, I don't think you can do anything about it. When I get a disk error, I usually try to work it out with DiskSalv. Almost always works! Betty