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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: Sutty100 on January 30, 2011, 04:55:03 PM
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Hi I recently started transferring adf files to my floppy disks. When I Initialize a floppy disk quite a lot wont and say they have bad sectors. I now have quite a pile of bad sector floppy's. My question is can I use some sort of application to format these and correct the bad sectors or are they for the bin?
Thanks
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Hi I recently started transferring adf files to my floppy disks. When I Initialize a floppy disk quite a lot wont and say they have bad sectors. I now have quite a pile of bad sector floppy's. My question is can I use some sort of application to format these and correct the bad sectors or are they for the bin?
Thanks
You can do a normal format, but their is no way to correct them.
I wouldn't recommend using floppy's with bad sectors either.
Are you using Easyadf ?
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I know newer versions of the Windows disk formatter will recognize bad sectors and dike them out of the filesystem, but I don't know if there's anything similar for the Amiga...
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There are formatting utilities on Aminet that will format what is usable, and map out what is not. Do a search on Aminet...
You can save most of those disks.
True this will not help you for writing ADF files - BUT it will at least allow you to use the disks for other storage (.dms most likely will not work on these disks either). One program on aminet is:
http://aminet.net/search?query=format+bad+disks
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It won't work cause most ADF's are 880KB and write the full 79/81 tracks on the disk, one bad sector and you run out of space, unless the ADF is smaller.
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Yeah, it wouldn't likely work for writing sector-perfect disk images, but anything OFS-based could just have the files copied over to the new disk.
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Good old XCopy is quite good at resurrecting floppies with bad sectors, as sometimes the sector isn't actually bad at all, it can be that they were last written to on a drive where the heads were slightly out of alignment or even sometimes it's just a case of the sectors having being written in as custom format that the AmigaOS can't read and reports them as being bad when using the Amigas Format command... :)
Give XCopy a go it always worked for me... :)
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When I Initialize a floppy disk quite a lot wont and say they have bad sectors.
I haven't had that bad a percentage with old floppies...
It could be they are bad, but I wonder what shape your drive is in?
Might not be the issue, but at least, I'd consider cleaning the floppy drive.
I've seen bad/dirty floppy drives kill more disks than actual bad disks..
(Of course, if the floppies were stored somewhere moist and developed some rot, a lot could be bad. In that case, they can gunk up your drive and make other floppies bad..)
Just throwing that out there..
desiv
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Can't Disksalv help with this, or is it only for hard drives?
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Quarterback Tools could be of help to you if you want to make use of some of your floppy disks with bad sectors :)
(http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o164/Cyberstorm604e/QB-Tools.jpg)
If you choose the option to check for bad blocks on both reads and writes of the floppy (as shown above), it will do so and put a file called bad.blocks on the disk. Then when you write your photos, docs or games to the disk, it will avoid using the blocks marked as bad :) However, it will not allow you to safely unpack ADF or DMS file onto a corrupt disk, as that would just overwrite the bad.blocks file.
:pint:
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I used to map bad blocks with qbtools few times decades ago, when diskettes were expensive. nowadays they are very cheap and most people stopped using them completely. perhaps dd diskettes cannot be found so easily, but for games and other not important stuff, writing temporarily to hd should work.
so, my advice is to just toss them. besides, there is a chance they might damage the floppy drive (depending on cause of bad blocks).
to test the diskettes, I usually do erase in xcopy, then format (no verify), then check.
if any tracks are bad, bin it..
also, if too many diskettes are bad, you should check/clean the fdd heads. perhaps it collected dust or something.
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Thanks everybody. Got a copy of xcopy and it seems after a few formats and checks the bad sectors are gone. Hurray!
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Hee hee... glad to hear it, thought XCopy would solve the problems... :)
(Sitting here with huge smug grin on me coupon... :biglaugh: )
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Heh, I've never thought about using XCopy for correcting bad disks. Now I know better. Thanks for the advice.
Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
The Other Group of Amigoids
http://www.calweb.com/~rabel1/
Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network
http://www.sccaners.org
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I'm not sure I'd use those floppies...
Maybe if they format fine on the first try....but if it takes a lot of effort / special software then it's probably a sign not just of data fade, but that the actual magnetic media is physically failing (i.e. oxide is flaking off the disks). Not good for reliable data storage or the heads of your floppy drive.
By now a lot of the adhesives that were used to keep the magnetic particles on the plastic disk substrate are beyond their expiry date.