Hello, Wayne.

In going thru old QWK packs today I happened on the below, from about a
month ago.  I've lost track of which of your machines this HDD ended up
in, and wondering how your testing of it turned out.  If the HDD was
actually "good" back then, it probably still is, but if it had a
terminal illness, it may by now have finally passed away.

Good luck. - - -  JimH.

-=> MATT MC_CARTHY wrote to JIM HOLSONBACK <=-

 MM> 09 Feb 2003, 16:32, JIM HOLSONBACK (1:123/140), wrote to WAYNE
 MM> CHIRNSIDE:

 MM> Hi JIM.  Hello Wayne also.

 WC>> Appears some 300 meg of the drive is mapped bad which I
 WC>> attribute to it coming from a household with kids and thus
 WC>> it's likely been bumped when running though fortunately the
 WC>> boot sector appears undamaged

 JH> OUCH! That's a lot of bad clusters.  I think the HDD is likely on
 JH> its way out.  Might be a good idea to wait a little before looking
 JH> for more DIMMS, as this one may be needing a HDD soon.

 JH> One way you could do some more checking on it would be to run
 JH> Scandisk a few more times.  If more bad clusters keep showing up, that
 JH> is a bad sign.

 MM> And if I may add...  IF Scandisk does NOT find additional bad sectors,
 MM> the ones marked as "bad" _may_ have been due to illegal
FAT entries,
 MM> ie: pointing to sectors that do not exist on the drive.  The "factory
 MM> program" for that drive has the ability to zero out the entire drive,
 MM> FAT included, as well as finding and marking 'true' bad sectors.  Then
 MM> run Scandisk a few more times for good luck.  If no errors are found,
 MM> you just might have a 'good' drive.

 MM>      Good luck...  M.

... Roadkill?! Heck, Jim, lets go back- that critter is still _alive_ -Bubba
--- MultiMail/MS-DOS v0.32