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Bad Disk Formatter


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On the Apple II, I have a utility that does the same thing. Ran it on a lot of my disks back in the day and it reported only a few bad sectors here and there. But it could do nothing, absolutely nothing, to predict what would happen in the future. What sort of degradation would happen over the years.

 

And what it certifies today, counts only for today. Not tomorrow. Unlike modern Flash and Hard Drives. Classic hardware can't tell if a sector is weak or not. It's either enough to fire off the pre-amp and flip the logic gates, or it isn't. There is no in-between No "weak" sector that "should" be refreshed or reallocated. By the time that happens, the data is gone and would need forensic reconstruction if at all possible.

 

I've had flash drives die and a few IDE HD's (all sata now) so the last thing I trust 100% are Atari floppies but I really do like the spirit in keeping it as authentic as possible, its pretty awesome to hear Tep is producing a game actually on real floppies but as said already, storing them the way we all used to is a lot more complex these days unless you have a HUGE house and a very understanding partner :)

 

I'd love to revisit those days but as my hardware gets older and eventually fails I'm lucky to know Altirra will never lose a belt or need its heads cleaned :)

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