Unusual stuff inside computers

[Fred Cisin]

>> I suppose that bad sector maps for ST506/412 hard drives don't count? :-)

On Mon, 3 Aug 2015, ben wrote:
> If is that bad, time for a new drive.
In the early days, particularly when actual ST506 and ST412 were common 
drives, there were VERY VERY few that had no bad tracks.

In the days of ST506/412 drives every responsible manufacturer included a 
list of bad tracks.   In the early days, there were plenty.  That was one 
of several reasons why reputable hard drive manufacturers rounded the 
capacity down, rather than peddling them with the size stated to half a 
dozen "significant" digits.  Would you rather have a "10 Meg" drive that 
formatted out to 10.1Mebibytes, or one that formatted to 10.1Mebibytes 
that was sold as  being "10.653696 Meg"  ("WOW! This drive is so good that 
it gave me MORE capacity than it was rated for!")


For a brief while, Spinrite defaulted to retoring to service any BAD 
TRACKS that passed Spinrite's tests!  That was based on the assumption 
that a simple read/write test is surely far more trustworthy than the 
special hardware and software that the manufacturer used to decide to
tell you not to trust that track.

--
Grumpy Ol' Fred     		cisin at xenosoft.com