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
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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