Date: Tue, 21 Jun 94 13:43:43 EDT
From: peprbv AT cfa0 DOT harvard DOT edu (Bob Babcock)
To: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Subject: Re: Catching disk errors
Reply-To: babcock AT cfa DOT harvard DOT edu

> Use BIOS calls to try to read the first sector.  You'll get an error
> return instead of the dos message.

Two problems:
1. This will catch disk not inserted, but it won't catch errors that occur
later such as sector not found.
2. If the drive in question is other than A: or B:, you have to figure out
whether it is a floppy or not.  Disks with partitions larger than 32MB need a
different format for an int 25h-level read.  Also, if it isn't a floppy, you
have to worry about how big a buffer is needed.