Fixing "old" (but not quite classic) IDE and MFM drives?

From: Julian Richardson <JRichardson_at_softwright.co.uk>
Date: Tue Jun 16 05:43:46 1998

>> I've got a question about "borderline" classics. I've got a few old PCs
>>from right around 1990, maybe a bit earlier and I've got several small IDE
>>and MFM drives that I've scavenged from various places.
>>
>> Several of these drives seem to almost work (they make the usual sounds
>>at power up and can be detected by the bios of a newer PC) but they won't
>>format/fdisk for me.

The way I understand it, IDE drives should automatically map out bad
blocks, (is this true for all IDE drives?) whereas MFM disks won't.
Therefore I'd assume that once an IDE drive starts presenting bad blocks
to the user its days are pretty numbered...

I was once told that a small percentage of an IDE disk is unused, purely
for the sake of providing a "reserve" area so that the disk could cope
with some bad blocks whilst still giving the user the impression that
full capacity was available - is this true, or just one of those stories
that I happened to turn up over the years??

cheers

J.
>
Received on Tue Jun 16 1998 - 05:43:46 BST