3.5 Floppy ScanDisk Equivalent

[ibook99]

I have been looking for a program that scans for bad sectors on 3.5 floppy disks like ScanDisk would do in DOS. Ideally, it would work with System 7. Does such a thing exist for Mac?

Thanks

 

[LaPorta]

Disk Utility? Norton Disk Doctor?

 

[s_pupp]

I believe Copy II Mac could identify which sectors are bad, in System 3.2/Finder 5.3. I’m relying on my memory of the year 1986, though.

 

[joevt]

I wrote a program in Pascal (Metrowerks CodeWarrior Pro 4, maybe Think Pascal) to copy disks. I don't remember how well it worked. It would skip bad blocks and try them later. It would try reading random blocks before trying to read the sector again in case moving the head around helps. I think you just insert a floppy and it would automatically try to create a disk image of the floppy and report bad blocks. It would save progress as a resource in the disk image so you could continue using different floppy drives if the current floppy drive wasn't working. It ejects the floppy when it finishes so you can insert another. I suppose it's like a simplified ddrescue for classic macOS.

I've attached the code. I'm not sure if I included everything needed to compile it. There's an included app but I haven't tried it in 20 years.