🚀 go-pugleaf

Richard RUDEK <x@invalid.zeta.org.au> wrote in message news:3976fa9e.41626850@news.zeta.org.au...
> Ian Lowery <ianl@nospam.curie.dialix.com.au> wrote:

>> Anybody got any clues as to what happened?

> I'd say, you probably ran into a side effect of
> using the "Auto" detect feature(s) of your BIOS.

I doubt it.

> If the partition table gets corrupted, it can cause the BIOS to
> decide to use a different type drive translation, other than LBA.

The bios AUTO setting doesnt use the partition
table. It just asks the drive about its parameters,
and the drive doesnt use the partition table either.

> This can then lead to BIOS not being able to access
> certain sectors, and perhaps trigger a bug somewhere.

Cant see that either. The mapping from CHS to logical block
numbers can certainly be affected by the geometry detail in the
master boot record, but thats an OS level problem, not a physical
drive level problem. And that just gets the mapping wrong, so the
drive contents make no sense, doesnt produce a very high level
of unreadable sectors with the drive obviously recalibrating when
attempting to read a particular sector. It just gets the wrong
sector when the wrong logical block number is arrived at.

> I'd doubt that the drives' sector relocation played as huge
> a role as might be suggested by your description, but it may
> well have with the MBR and/or parts of the primary partition.

Yes, with the failure to format, but not with the very high error rate.

> Download the Quantum Data Protection System utility (QDPSATA.EXE)
> from Quantum, and see what it has to say about the drive. Run it with
> the /L switch (the bloody license is ~ 5 pages long). eg QDPSATA /L

> If you tell it to "Print the results", it will create a file called TEMP.TXT.

But that isnt likely to say much if its an intermittent
fault, particularly if it was a fault external to the drive.