19 Jan
2005
19 Jan
'05
2:39 a.m.
>>>> "Bj??rn" == Bj??rn Vermo
<bv(a)norbionics.com> writes:
Bj??rn> On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 09:35:01 -0800 (PST), Dwight K. Elvey
Bj??rn> <dwight.elvey(a)amd.com> wrote:
> Hi 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.
Bj??rn> ...
Bj??rn> Any OS / file system has problems if track 0 is really bad,
Bj??rn> especially if sector 0 is bad.
That's definitely not true. For example, PDP11s use sector 0 for the
boot sector, bot not for anything else. A disk that doesn't need to
be booted will work perfectly well with an unreadable sector 0.
Depending on the OS, there may be some other critical sector (sector 1
on RSTS, for example). More sophisticated file structures have a
search rule, where the "superblock" can be found in one of several
places that are checked in order.
paul