Re: Low level formatting - [was Re: slow (s-l-o-w) install (TRY)]

Frank Cox wrote:
On Mon, 18 Feb 2008 12:54:48 -0500
Bill Davidsen <davidsen@xxxxxxx> wrote:

The main reason indeed, by going to a different interleave matched to your usage you could get a big jump in performance (or make it dog slow). And by playing with large sector sizes you could get a large jump in capacity. Just as a 3-1/2 floppy can jump from 1440k to 1920k with large sectors, some hard drives could get a similar boost in capacity, up to 40%.

I used to have (probably still have, somewhere) a DOS program that would test
your drive access speeds and optimize the interleave for maximum speed. It
worked really well.

Spinrite?

On the subject of capacity, the value of larger (or smaller) sector sizes
depends on the data being stored on it. I used to have a .sys device driver
that created a "virtual drive" from a file on your disk with a very small
sector size. I used that to store Fidonet .MSG files (which tended to be small)
and got a big boost in my capacity due to less wasted space.

I have a S-100 disk controller that would read the entire track in one revaluation of the disk. It would then give you the sector you wanted, and buffer the rest of the track. With the on-drive buffers, I would not be surprised if that is what they are doing on modern drives, so the interleave would not make much difference. Besides, with defect management and different sectors/track, depending on where it is on the drive, I am not sure how you would go about changing the interleave.

Mikkel
--

Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!

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