🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Apr16.141957.13603@sdf.lonestar.org>
  jtrimble@sdf.lonestar.org (John Trimble) writes:
>
>My wife and I write together, each using Timeworks WordWriter on 
>separate ST's. We continually run into a problem which we haven't 
>been able to nail down.  The problem only happens when we're working 
>together, and after we've swapped disks, though often it is long 
>enough later that we've forgotten exactly what steps we took with 
>each swapped disk.   
>
Such disk swapping is dangerous and can easily lead to disk corruption.
Whenever the ST detects that the disk has been removed/replaced from
the drive, it reads the serial number on the disk.  If the serial number
has not changed (from the last time it was checked), then the ST _assumes_
that the disk has not changed.  If you, in fact, have placed the disk
into another computer and modified it, then the ST's assumption is false--
the disk contents have changed and buffered information (directories and
FATs) may be incorrect.  Further changes to the disk can cause the 
incorrect directory/FAT information to be written to the disk, corrupting
its files.

I believe that you can avoid this problem by always placing another,
unrelated, disk in the drive between swaps.  Do a directory listing
on that disk to flush the old disk's info out of memory.  Then, when
you replace your original disk, everything is read afresh.  I think
for TOS versions 1.4 and above there is also some desktop hotkey that
forces a re-reading of disk information.  Maybe someone else can post
what that might be...

-- Scott Willingham // willing@icsl.ucla.edu