NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #26/NN_1992_26.iso/spool/comp/sys/ibm/pc/hardware/28953

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-04 | 1.8 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!pipex!warwick!warwick!not-for-mail
From: [e-mail] (Mr C A Elliott)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Spinrite II on IDE drives
Date: 5 Nov 1992 10:41:20 -0000
Organization: Computing Services, University of Warwick, UK
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Distribution: world
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: clover.csv.warwick.ac.uk

Spinrite II does not like IDE drives. Firstly, many have cache systems
in them which Spinrite may or may not recognise, but if it does you won't
even be able to load the program up. Secondly, when you do and ask Spinrite
to begin its analysis, it will go all the way through (showing you intersector
angle, RPM etc.) until it gets to the field showing encoding technology. A
message will then come up informing you that the drive has different
parameters to what the controller is reporting (sector translation at work!)
and will refuse to low level format the drive.

I don't understand why there is an obsession with low level formatting
IDE drives. I realise that for people that have worked with RLL or MFM
technologies, low level formats may have seemed to fix a lot of problems, but
IDE drives just do not like it.

Many BIOS (especially AMI) will low level format an IDE drive (it will
also put hundreds of errors on it and kill it), but the only real way
to do it is to use the software that manufacturers supply. Despite working
for a company that used thousands of Seagate drives a day, Seagate would
still not let us have a copy of the software, although I have used the
Western Digital software. When drives would come back for repair, many
had been low levelled using various programs, and all were dumped and had
to be replaced with new drives.

Charles

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