IBM F50 RS/6000 7025 - Manual (Page 289)

Optical Disk Service Aids
The Optical Disk Service Aids consist of Initialize, Format and Certify, and Spare
Sector Availability service aids.
Initialize
This service aid is used to format the optical disk without certifying it. This option
does not reassign the defective sectors; however, it is a quick way of formatting
after cleaning the disk.
Format and Certify
This service aid is used to format the optical disk and certify it. The certification
process is drive specific and performs the surface analysis of all user data and
spare sectors. The defective sectors are reassigned.
Spare Sector Availability
This service aid checks the number of spare sectors available on the optical disk.
The spare sectors are used to reassign when defective sectors are encountered
during normal usage or during a format and certify operation. Low availability of
spare sectors indicates that the disk needs to be backed up and replaced.
Formatting the disk will not improve the availability of spare sectors.
Periodic Diagnostics Service Aid
This service aid provides a tool for configuring periodic diagnostics and automatic
error log analysis. A hardware resource can be chosen to be tested once a day, at a
user specified time. If the resource cannot be tested because it is busy, error log
analysis is performed. Hardware errors logged against a resource can also be
monitored by enabling Automatic Error Log Analysis. This allows error log analysis to
be performed every time a hardware error is put into the error log. If a problem is
detected, a message is posted to the system console and a mail message sent to
the user(s) belonging to the system group with information about the failure such as
Service Request Number.
The service aid provides the following functions:
Add or delete a resource to the periodic test list
Modify the time to test a resource
Display the periodic test list
Modify the error notification mailing list
Disable Automatic Error Log Analysis
Chapter 7. Using the Service Aids 7-19