disk partitioning

[Chris Torek]

In article <497 at carina.noao.UUCP> grandi at noao.UUCP (Steve Grandi) writes:

>For UDA-50 supported disks (i.e. RA81s) ...  it is safe to use the
>entire RA81 disk (all 891072 sectors) without worrying about bad
>block tables.

This is true . . .

>They DO NOT have bad-block tables that can be accessed by normal
>disk read/writes.  Other tables used in the revectoring process
>itself are also inaccessible by normal reads and writes.

but this is not.  The bad block tables and the spare sectors are
easily read or written with normal file system writes IF you make
a file system extending past sector 891071.  This is somewhat hard
to do, as the defalt driver tables prevent this, but if you alter
these tables, or write special kernel-munging programs, it can be
done.
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 1516)
UUCP:	seismo!umcp-cs!chris
CSNet:	chris at umcp-cs		ARPA:	chris at mimsy.umd.edu