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Date:	Sat, 25 Oct 2003 15:28:38 PDT7
From:	Peter Skye <pskye@peterskye.com >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: Re: Precautionary Low-Level

Content Type: text/plain

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Steve Carter wrote:
>
> I then make a bunch of FAT partitions and run Spinrite on
> the partitions for several days (or as long as it takes)
> before committing my data to the drive. It seems like
> a lot of preparation, but I don't have to do it very often.
>
> True, SpinRite does not recognize HPFS, but then I only use
> SpinRite to verify surface integrity BEFORE the _real_ installation.

This checks whether the drive is okay or not, but lurkers should be
aware that if you then change from FAT to something else (such as HPFS)
the sector remapping done by SpinRite is *lost*. Thus, SpinRite for
integrity checking is fine, but not for fixing.

I don't know how HPFS handles (remaps?) "bad" sectors. The machine I'm
on right now has an old 2 GB drive for its Master Primary and I had to
"manually" determine how to partition HPFS around a block of bad sectors
that worked fine as FAT (because FAT remapped them). I did so using a
binary search -- partition as HPFS and see if FORMAT worked, then make
the partition bigger or smaller based on success or failure and FORMAT
again. Eventually I identified a 2 MB bad sector area which I then made
"free space" between two partitions.

So you don't have to use Spinrite.

- Peter

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