CompuServe Messages

Phil, SCSI devices don't necessairly handle bad blocks on their own, it depends on the controller itself. It's a settable parameter on some drives, and simply not available on some (such as the Conner). However, they *should* map them out automatically on a low level format. I've written a quickie low level format program for generic SCSI devices..it simply issues the SCSI format command to the device and off it goes. It's not quite ready for release yet (I'll post it when I'm done)…mainly because my spare Conner now is really DOA and I really don't want to test on my other working Conner (but probably will). All that aside, Konica's drive controller may or may not handle bad sectors in the "normal" manner. It may require an auxiliary drive. Again…I'm working on a program that should help in a situation like this. It'll do read/writes to the drive, and if either fails…attempt to have the drive re-assign the block. And again…my problem is not having a spare drive for test work. No, giving bad sectors to PREP will be of little value…SCSI uses "logical" blocks…thus any block number can be anywhere on the disk and it's not possible to determine with any reasonable expectation of accuracy what cylinder, head, offset to feed PREP> Don