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HDISK.INF
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1986-09-03
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3KB
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48 lines
The Following is a small collection of Information relating to hard disks,
interleave, and soem of the popular misconceptions about them. I pass it
along here for those interested..
1. Since DOS can only handle 615 cyclinders max, some users are
being short changed on their hard disks. The Tulin 33 meg actually
has 640 cyclinders - not 615 as was programmed in it's initial
low level format. There is a program called Vfeature - which
allows splitting up a physical disk into several smaller logical
drives - Allowing you to perform a low level format on the disk
specifying the full 640 cyclinder capacity - which will increase the
the disk capacity by 1.5 meg - (not bad).
2. Some disk suppliers are advertising a "faster" disk that uses
an interleave of 3. Phooey! There are only two hard disk
controller cards for the PC which will support the faster interleave
setting - ADAPTEC and the new short OMTI cards. These can run at
an interleave of 3, but none of the others. This was confirmed
by the folks at Tulin and by many tests. Note that if you are
using a Western Digital controller, your disk will actually slow
down if you are using an interleave of anything other than 6.
To check this out, Several low level formats were performed on
Seagate 20 and Tulin 33 meg disks here (the slow ones), using inter-
leaves of 3, 4, and 6. The results of the test (which was a heavy
random read/write test) was that an interleave of 3 resulted in a
time for the test of around 10 minutes, 31 seconds. An interleave
of 6, resulted in a time of 5 minutes, 45 seconds. At 4, it was
about 8 and 1/2 minutes. So, if you have one of the non-40 millisec
drives, leave your interleave set at 6. If you are not sure what you
have, you can buy Vfeature and set it yourself. Also, if you are
using a Western Digital controller, there is a ROM BIOS patch you can
call up using DEBUG to go in and alter your disk boot area. However,
this procedure is VERY risky and should not be tried by the novice
unfamiliar with hard disk allocation tables, etc. If you are inter-
ested in how it works, Get in touch with Fred Clark at the SALT AIR BBS,
(801)-266-0328, for the info regarding that one.
3. If you are interested in the Vfeature product - which allows you
to take ANY hard disk and partition it up into several logical
drives (while at the same time allowing you to perform low level
formats on the drive at various interleave settings), contact the
folks at Golden Bow Systems at 619-298-9349.