CompuServe Messages

2090/hard drive problem

    07-Jan-89 19:50:02
Fm: Claude J. Gosch 75305,771
To: PAUL NICHOLS 71350,1260
Paul, I had similar experiences with my HD. With the jumpers set as I thought they should be, and the drive reponding to PREP, I'd go to format, get a message that it was formatting the first cylinder, then it quit – with no error message. Don gave me some good advice to correct my mountlist errors, but even with that corrected, it wouldn't format. I finally called Seagate and found out that the write precompression cylinder fo my drive (which was supposed to have 615 cylinders ) was cylinder 616! PREP was suggesting 615 and would not let me use 616 until I told it I had 616 cylinders. I only fomatted (per my mountlist entry) to 614 per Don's recommendation (the cylinders are numbered 0 to 614). After I had the write precomp value corrected, formatting worked. I still don't understand exactly what this cylinder no. means, but apparently it was critical in my case. Claude