Xref: utzoo comp.sys.ibm.pc:18084 comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d:746 Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!bbn!humming!simcha From: simcha@humming.UUCP (Simcha Lerner) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d Subject: Re: Steve Gibson's "SpinRite" product Keywords: Non-destructive low-level format; interleave optimization Message-ID: <246@humming.UUCP> Date: 16 Aug 88 04:18:21 GMT References: <989@acornrc.UUCP> Reply-To: simcha@humming.UUCP (Simcha Lerner) Distribution: na Organization: Kurzweil A.I. Waltham, Mass. Lines: 61 In article <989@acornrc.UUCP> bob@acornrc.UUCP (Bob Weissman) writes: >Has anyone used Gibson's "SpinRite"? > >Having run the recently posted "spintest" program, it appears that my >Seagate ST238-R has been formatted with a suboptimal interleave factor >of 4. ("spintest" claimed it took 18 revs to read a track! Bleah!) This figure is hard to believe, since the theoretical worst case for normal MFM hard drives is 17 rotations. (Unless it is counting the 1/2 rotation (on average) latency to find the first sector.) >"SpinRite" claims it can perform a non-destructive low-level format >while optimizing interleave. > >This feature in itself would probably make this product worth the $59 >list price, assuming it really speeds up my disk transfers. I have used a similar product (see below) and I have always noticed a 40-50% increase in throughput when I change a drive from an interleave of 3 (typical factory default) to 2 (a good number for fast ATs). >Alternatively, does anyone know of any other software which performs >this task? Phoenix Technologies Ltd. has had an OEM product out for 1-1/2 years called Control-386. It provides many very userful utilities that enhance the speed, performance and compatibility of most '386 machines. As a part of the setup, they have a routine the determines the optimum interleave and the current interleave, and then performs a low level format while (optionally) saving the data in place. (The last version that I was familiar with did not require a '386 in order to run the format utilities.) This is not as hard as it sounds, since the ST-506 type drives allow track by track formatting. (You read off a track worth of data into ram, format the track with the proper interleave, then restore the data. As a safety factor, you skip any tracks with a bad sector, so as to avoid moving the bad spot to a different sector.) Unless your machine came with Control/386 (or you have a friend who can lend you his installation diskette), SpinRite sounds like a good deal, given that there are some other utilities that are supposed to help prolong the life of your data on the drive included in the product. >Thanks, >-- >Bob Weissman >Internet: bob@acornrc.uucp >UUCP: ...!{ ames | decwrl | oliveb | pyramid }!acornrc!bob >Arpanet: bob%acornrc.uucp@ames.arc.nasa.gov Simcha Lerner harvard!humming!simcha ^^^^^^^ (not bbn) All opinions are my own, but you are welcome to share them.