Explanation of disk copying messages?

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Explanation of disk copying messages?

Postby njr » Tue Mar 18, 2014 7:02 pm

Hi,

I recently bought a CFFA3000 for my unenhanced //e and am trying to image a number of 5 ¼" disks with Disk II drives.

As you might imagine for disks last touched in 1983-1987 or so, I'm getting a bunch of disk errors. I did clean the Disk II—which helped—and note I have better luck with my much-less-used drive 2, but I’d also like to know when an import is successful and when I need to try again.

For example, on the disk I just tried importing, the CFFA outputs:

Code: Select all
 |******* … ***|

Track 30: read 15 of 16 sectors (BFFF)

  Found all 16 sectors.
Finished.


Does this mean it was successful on a retry or not? Should I try to verify the disks independently, or can I trust that if the import completed, that the contents are intact? (I plan on throwing them out after I'm finished.) Prior to my cleaning the drive, or with copy protected disks I've seen the CFFA copier get "stuck" on a track/sector, but I want to understand fully what the messages mean.

Thanks!
njr
 
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Re: Explanation of disk copying messages?

Postby david__schmidt » Tue Mar 18, 2014 7:28 pm

When it says, "read 15 of 16 sectors (BFFF)", that means it wasn't able to read all of the sectors that were available. You'd see a solid line of * characters if it was completely successful. You could try again, but sometimes the Disk II simply isn't able to read some or all of a disk any more. Sometimes you get what you get - and it's not 100%. Sometimes that's enough - especially if the bad sectors happen to be unused. A more sophisticated copy program like Copy II+ might be able to tell you, for example, if a bad sector were unused. It might do a better job of copying a marginal disk to a better disk, which you could in turn use with the CFFA3000 to image.
david__schmidt
 
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