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Re: A partial format?
Dan Masterson <dmasters@freenet.columbus.oh.us> wrote:
> Silly suggestion, but won't Bag of Tricks II allow you to init blocks? I
> know BOT will do this with tracks on a DOS 3.3 disk.
Bag of Tricks II can reformat individual tracks on a 5.25" disk, either
ProDOS or DOS 3.3. It cannot do partial formats on any other type of
volume.
> : <HTML>How can I initialize only blocks $000A and $000B of the ProDOS
> : partition on my Sider (original 10MB Sider, not 42MB SCSI, or
> : anything)? Would Copy ][+ 8.4's Copy With Format get a desired (for
> : me!) effects?
There is no way to "format" individual blocks of a hard drive. In some
cases, soft errors on a hard drive can be corrected by simply _writing_
to damaged blocks (if the error is just that the ECC - error correction
code - is incorrect). If the sectoring information has been damaged,
you will have to do a low-level format on the entire drive. How this is
achieved depends on the software and drive.
The safest solution is to copy everything you want to keep off the
drive, then do a low level format, then copy everything back.
--
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand