I have a computer that is running eComStation, and it became unreliable, with a trap screen after a minute of use.
I replaced the computer, and it's fine, but I was curious what was happening with the unreliable one. I booted from a USB stick and ran chkdsk /f on the drive, and one file was unrepairable. That was enough for me. I don't know why it happened, but I decided to format the drive and restore from backup.
I used FORMAT /L C: /FS:JFS to format the drive. That appears to work, but now I wonder what that does.
According to Jim Wilkerson, years ago, the /L parameter didn't just remove the header records but
formatted the drive removing all data. My understanding it was sector by sector putting ones and zeros
back on the drive as it was originally when it was new. I don't know what happens if there are bad areas on the
drive but I recall it may map around the bad area.
I don't think it works the same in every file system. I think the working code is implemented in the mini-FS driver. The behavior is documented for HPFS, but not for other file systems. What does FORMAT /L do in JFS?