Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!mtunx!rutgers!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!pdn!boake2!jc3b21!fgd3
From: fgd3@jc3b21.UUCP (Fabbian G. Dufoe)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A plea for bad block handling in the file system.
Summary: Better to lose a track than a disk.
Message-ID: <410@jc3b21.UUCP>
Date: 7 Jun 88 00:46:10 GMT
References: <2009@sugar.UUCP> <7144@swan.ulowell.edu> <2026@sugar.UUCP> <6180@well.UUCP>
Organization: St. Petersburg Jr. College, FL
Lines: 23

In article <6180@well.UUCP>, ewhac@well.UUCP (Leo 'Bols Ewhac' Schwab) writes:
> 	The only way to get around this is to have the trackdisk.device
> perform bad *track* mapping.  However, that can become expensive in terms of
> disk space.  

     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.

--Fabbian Dufoe
  350 Ling-A-Mor Terrace South
  St. Petersburg, Florida  33705
  813-823-2350

UUCP: ...gatech!codas!usfvax2!jc3b21!fgd3