Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!mtunx!rutgers!cmcl2!brl-adm!umd5!trantor.umd.edu!louie From: louie@trantor.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: A plea for bad block handling in the file system. Message-ID: <2800@umd5.umd.edu> Date: 7 Jun 88 12:43:50 GMT References: <2009@sugar.UUCP> <7144@swan.ulowell.edu> <2026@sugar.UUCP> <6180@well.UUCP> <410@jc3b21.UUCP> Sender: news@umd5.umd.edu Reply-To: louie@trantor.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos) Organization: University of Maryland, College Park Lines: 29 In article <410@jc3b21.UUCP> fgd3@jc3b21.UUCP (Fabbian G. Dufoe) writes: > I'd much rather have the trackdisk.device perform bad track mapping >than just ignore media problems altogether. Sure, excluding bad tracks >wastes a lot of disk space. But I'd rather lose a whole track because one >sector is defective than have the entire disk or file be unreadable. > > Certainly the format program should identify bad tracks and lock them >out. Media failures are a fact of life. It's entirely unreasonable to >ignore them and tell everyone to buy better disks. I only use Sony DS-DDs >but I still want AmigaDOS to check the media during formatting. And I want >bad tracks to be locked out when they are identified so I don't lose >valuable data by writing to them. While I agree that bad block mapping be done in the disk device driver, I really think that its overkill for a $2 piece of media. Is it really worth the trouble? Save some grief and just throw it away. I think that the point of diminishing return has been passed. Unless you designate a reserved track on *EACH AND EVERY* floppy disk that you format, you won't be able to DISKCOPY from one floppy to another. I use Sony DS/DD, 3M DS/DD and BASF DS/DD. In blue, black and tan colors. I don't have to toss very many of them at all. Do you really want Commodore/Amiga to spend time screwing with a working trackdisk.device, or doing something more productive? Louis A. Mamakos WA3YMH Internet: louie@TRANTOR.UMD.EDU University of Maryland, Computer Science Center - Systems Programming