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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!uunet!spool.mu.edu!think.com!rpi!psinntp!psinntp!ficc!peter From: peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva) Subject: Re: 386BSD and IDE drives Message-ID: <id.O7NT.0O3@ferranti.com> Organization: Xenix Support, FICC References: <19r0h6INNp42@aludra.usc.edu> <1992Sep24.022400.19483@fcom.cc.utah.edu> <Bv32LD.K9t@chinet.chi.il.us> Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 21:20:26 GMT Lines: 38 In article <Bv32LD.K9t@chinet.chi.il.us> randy@chinet.chi.il.us (Randy Suess) writes: > Something is very wrong here. My experience is that IDE drives > are great for UNIX and IDEAL for 386bsd. Main reason is that, like > SCSI, they hide bad sectors from the OS. This is the one problem with SCSI, and presumably IDE. Why? What happens when you have a marginal disk? When you're running MFM or ESDI, you start getting more and more disk errors, and you have time to back up and reformat. When you're running SCSI, you suddenly (without warning) get a LOT of errors when the bad sector table fills up. By then it's too late to do anything about it. I've been burned by this. I used to think this sort of bad track mapping was cool, but I've come to the conclusion that the operating system should manage bad sectors. It's the part of the whole system that knows (1) what the bad sectors mean, and (2) how to tell the user something's wrong. Of course, it needs to do a good job of this, with options to automatically map bad blocks into a bad block list and tools to clean up afterwards. This is a lot harder than assuming a perfect medium. But it's > Never a need to run bad144 or worry about bad sectors. Oh, you should worry. Trust me. > Second, for a 1 or 2 drive system, IDE > is a non-negligable amount less cost than SCSI. Not unless you really compromise on the quality of the drives, or unless you've got some sort of special deal. Street prices vary by $20-$50 for the same drive in SCSI and IDE versions. -- Peter da Silva `-_-' Ferranti Intl. Ctls. Corp. 'U` Sugar Land, TX 77487-5012 +1 713 274 5180 Har du kramat din varg idag?