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General Category => Technical Support - General => Topic started by: littlangel on 15:52, 07 June 20

Title: Ignoring bad sectors on 3" disks?
Post by: littlangel on 15:52, 07 June 20
Hey there!So a little while ago my neighbour gave me his old cpc 464 with the FD-1 disk drive for me to play around with. Took me a while to understand the basics of it and fix the drive since I'm just an ignorant teen  ;D
Anyway, now I'm facing an issue with the disks themselves. most of them have a few bad sectors. So when I write a program with CPCdiskXP it won't start because a bit of the data would be corrupted. Now is there a way to write a game on those disks while ignoring the bad sectors? I have a box full of these disks but almost all of them have this issue and it would feel bad to throw them away.

thank you!
Title: Re: Ignoring bad sectors on 3" disks?
Post by: TotO on 15:57, 07 June 20
You can format and test them with MultiMark.  ;) 
The program add dummy files to isolate defective tracks.

Formatting more than one time a floppy disc can fix some bad sectors.
If the track 0 is dead, try to format SYSTEM next DATA to fix sometime them.  :-\
Title: Re: Ignoring bad sectors on 3" disks?
Post by: Shaun M. Neary on 15:59, 07 June 20
Hi, and welcome to the forum.

I've done this. There is a tool call Multimark or MM12 that will mark the bad sectors and leave the remaining usable.
However if the disk is very badly damaged, Multimark won't stand a chance. But it will let you use the disk... for a while anyway.

Now for the bad...
1) One the disk goes, it's only a matter of time before the rest of it will get damaged, so don't get too attached to it.
2) Depending on how badly the disk is damaged, your chance of doing a 1:1 copy of a game successfully is pretty slim. In which case, I'd find cracked or compactage copies to use these on instead.
Good luck.
Title: Re: Ignoring bad sectors on 3" disks?
Post by: littlangel on 16:03, 07 June 20
Hey, thank you for your answer :)
So I already tried marking bad sectors with multimark, sorry I didn't mention. However if i plug the drive into a windows computer and write a dsk file with CPCdiskXP it doesnt take into account the bad sectors. Any help? thanks
Title: Re: Ignoring bad sectors on 3" disks?
Post by: TotO on 16:09, 07 June 20
No, it only works if you have to copy games files on it. But MultiMark allow you to detect witch floppy disc if OK for the usage.
Title: Re: Ignoring bad sectors on 3" disks?
Post by: Shaun M. Neary on 16:55, 07 June 20
Quote from: littlangel on 16:03, 07 June 20
Hey, thank you for your answer :)
So I already tried marking bad sectors with multimark, sorry I didn't mention. However if i plug the drive into a windows computer and write a dsk file with CPCdiskXP it doesnt take into account the bad sectors. Any help? thanks
Yeah 1:1 copies won't work as the bad sectors will get in the way.
Find a cracked version and use a file copy program like JL copy or something and copy that way.
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