18 Jan
2005
18 Jan
'05
4:34 a.m.
On Tue, 18 Jan 2005, Dwight K. Elvey wrote:
DOS has an irritating feature when asked to format
a disk. If track 0 is partially readable it will
fail to format, even if you use the /u option.
I've been moving data from one machine to another
and the source machine has a flaky drive. It sometimes
trashes track 0.
I've found that the only way to get around this problem
is to wipe the disk with a strong magnet.
Why can't it just try to format first and then check
track 0. Why must it fail to format because track 0
is partially readable when I specifically asked it
to unconditionally format?
I know. It's another one of those stupid things that MS did with DOS that
makes absolutely no sense. Just format the damn disk and report any
errors for the USER to decide.
I once came across some program on the WWW that supposedly rehabilitates
such disks (most likely by doing an LLF on track 0) but unfortunately I
never bookmarked it.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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