PAM key elimination

New disk formats, particularly the non-key (NK) format, have been introduced to increase the net storage capacity and the effective data transfer rate. The NK disk is formatted without PAM key (non-key disk). In order to be able to use the NK disk, the K files must be converted to NK files (PAM key elimination).

Several different disk file formats exist for SAM, ISAM and UPAM files: the previous format tied to the PAM key (K format) and the non-PAM key formats (NK2 and NK4 formats).
The file format is defined by the BLKCTRL value. BLKCTRL can assume the value
PAMKEY, DATA, DATA2K, DATA4K or NO. For details on the file formats, please refer to [9 (Related publications)].