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Newsgroups: bit.listserv.i-amiga
Date:         Sun, 27 Dec 1992 21:17:00 CST
From:         Lance Tagliapietra <96720919@UCS.UWPLATT.EDU>
Subject:      Re: AmiDos ate my hard drive!

>Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 14:04:00 PST
>From: "26637::BRZWICKY" <BRZWICKY%26637.decnet@CONSRT.ROCKWELL.COM>
>Subject: AmiDos ate my hard drive!
>
>Awright, I just lost faith in AmigaDOS.  I was running PKAZIP, which
>proceeded to lock up while writing to the hard drive.  On rebooting,
>I found a bad block on my disk.  It looks for all the world like the
>hardware stopped writing the block in the MIDDLE of the write!  This
>happened twice, with the second time destroying the block header.  This
>apparantly points to an error on Commodore's part for allowing whatever
>it was that's destroying the FORMAT of the disk, rather than just the
>data. (snarl, snarl)

Well, a crash when writing to the hard drive is the worst case for any
operating system.  That said, I always explode stuff compressed with
Zip type compression to the RAM: drive and then re-compress with LHA
which is a bit more Amiga friendly, and in my experience gives better
compression.

The low level format of the disk is controlled by the controller on
the drive (for SCSI drives) and a wayward program cannot affect that
(the high level AmigaDos format is another matter).

>
>Obviously I'm going to delete that program, once my hard disk is back
>in order, but in the mean time, the disk-validator won't, diskdoctor
>just moves the error, and FixDisk refuses to see the problem even when
>I tell it which block is bad.

Ah, the disk validator will not validate the volume.

Did you let FixDisk do a complelete cylinder for cylinder check of the
disk?  If fixdisk gets completely through the drive without finding
any problems, then you should be able to tell it to re-validate the
drive.  If the drive is not validated after FixDisk gets through it,
turn on the write enable switch from the FixDisk options menu, and then
choose the validate disk option from its main control panel.

DiskDoctor should not be used on hard drives, as it leaves them in a
read only state anyway.  Where does DiskDoctor move the error to?

>
>Is there any way to fix it?  How can anyone be expected to take Amiga
>seriously if it requires a backup and reformat every few weeks?

Well, out of 12 months of near continuous operation, I have never had
a crash where I *had* to reformat the drive.  Once I did have a sector
that the controller thought was physically bad, but I just made sure
it got allocated to a file, and then never deleted that file until I
finally did get around to doing a full backup/restore of the drive
(about 10 months later).

>
>(In spite of the ranting, there is a genuine plea
> for help in there.  Somewhere.)
>
>|\      / Bill Zwicky                       / I multitask!
>|<      / Insight Industries, Inc.          / So does my Amiga!
>|/itman / BRZWICKY%26637.decnet@consrt.rockwell.com


-Lance
 ---------------- Amiga - The Wild Side of Power Computing -----------------
 Lance Tagliapietra                       Internet: 96720919@ucs.uwplatt.edu
 P.O. Box 26                                BitNet: 96720919@uwplatt
 Platteville, WI 53818
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU