wayne384
02-19-2002, 02:08 PM
Hi,
As we know, when MS FDISK is asked to partition a hard drive (HDD), it spends a good deal of time “Verifying drive integrity”, less on small drives and substantially more on large (60GB) drives. Well, because of a problem I was experiencing, having MS FDISK create an extended partition on a 60GB HDD, I wanted to see just what area of the disk was being scanned while MS FDISK was “verififing drive integrity”. Here is what I uncovered (literally). I took the top cover off an old working HDD (2.5 GB) to watch the arm (head).
When the MS FDISK was verifying, the arm went to the approximate location that one would expect, for a primary partition, the arm (head) stayed at the edge of the platter (Sector 0), for a 50% extended partition, the arm went to the 50% portion of the usable disk area, 80%, 80% etc. It stayed there while doing the checks! Sooo... MS FDISK does NOT scan or search the hard drive while verifying!
On the other hand, “format” does search the entire usable area of the disk, if there is one volume, otherwise it scans the area where the concerned volume would be expected to be. All “measurements” were made by “eyeball” and a plastic ruler - so this is not the final word, but the observations created “a need to know.”
What is MS FDISK doing while it is “Verifying drive integrity”? Can anyone shed some light on this? Is it calculating CHS/LBA values??
Western Digital’s “LifeGuard”, PQ's Partition Magic, Free FDISK and other such partitioning programs apparently make the same partitions, but do not perform the verifying function... apparently the verifying is not that critical.
Any insight you can give me would be appreciated. Thanks for your time.
------------------
Wayne
wgplumtr@lasd.org
As we know, when MS FDISK is asked to partition a hard drive (HDD), it spends a good deal of time “Verifying drive integrity”, less on small drives and substantially more on large (60GB) drives. Well, because of a problem I was experiencing, having MS FDISK create an extended partition on a 60GB HDD, I wanted to see just what area of the disk was being scanned while MS FDISK was “verififing drive integrity”. Here is what I uncovered (literally). I took the top cover off an old working HDD (2.5 GB) to watch the arm (head).
When the MS FDISK was verifying, the arm went to the approximate location that one would expect, for a primary partition, the arm (head) stayed at the edge of the platter (Sector 0), for a 50% extended partition, the arm went to the 50% portion of the usable disk area, 80%, 80% etc. It stayed there while doing the checks! Sooo... MS FDISK does NOT scan or search the hard drive while verifying!
On the other hand, “format” does search the entire usable area of the disk, if there is one volume, otherwise it scans the area where the concerned volume would be expected to be. All “measurements” were made by “eyeball” and a plastic ruler - so this is not the final word, but the observations created “a need to know.”
What is MS FDISK doing while it is “Verifying drive integrity”? Can anyone shed some light on this? Is it calculating CHS/LBA values??
Western Digital’s “LifeGuard”, PQ's Partition Magic, Free FDISK and other such partitioning programs apparently make the same partitions, but do not perform the verifying function... apparently the verifying is not that critical.
Any insight you can give me would be appreciated. Thanks for your time.
------------------
Wayne
wgplumtr@lasd.org