*BSD News Article 5883


Return to BSD News archive

Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!uunet!utcsri!torn!maccs!mcshub!csx.cciw.ca!u009
From: u009@csx.cciw.ca (G. Stewart Beal)
Subject: [386bsd]Wanted:PC Diagnostic reporting bad BLOCKS (not track/head)
Organization: Canada Centre for Inland Waters
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 17:31:09 GMT
Message-ID: <1992Oct1.173109.5869@csx.cciw.ca>
Summary: actual bad sector numbers wanted
Lines: 20

I am looking for some kind of diagnostic for a MFM hard disk which will
report the actual block number (or cylinder+head + SECTOR) of bad blocks
on it. I want to spare out the bad blocks under 386BSD but the only
diagnostics I can find (Speedstore, Disk Manager, Mace HTest) all report
only the track containing the error. While I was playing with the drive on
a Mac, I got a listing of some of the blocks after it was formatted with
1:1 interleave but on the PC, I can only use 2:1 so the block numbers I
currently have are probably meaningless. I have the Cyl/Head/BFI values
of some of the flaws from the manufacturer, but I can't calculate the sector
'cause I don't know the actual byte by byte organization of a track, besides
the interleaving would complicate things too much for my little brain!
So if you've got a pet diagnostic that reports Blocks or sectors, I'd
love to hear from you.
 
Regards, Stu Beal, VE3MWM, U009@CS.CCIW.CA,
National Water Research Institute, Burlington, Ontario, Canada.
 
"A breathless story that zips along at warp speed... because the characters
are undeveloped and the author has not the least sense of narrative pace."