arasmith@mathcs.emory.edu (David Arasmith) (01/12/90)
A strange thing happened to me this morning. I put a DS/DD 5.25" floppy
in the drive to format (1.2M drive). When the formatting was done I was told
(well you know what I mean) that the floppy was formatted to 1.2M? This
is NOT a high density disk (Nashua). So is:
1) the system lying to me about the capacity?
2) the floppy actually formatted to 1.2M?
3) the question way too stupid to answer?
Some explanation: I am a Unix dude trying to survive my first 48 hours as
a DOS owner (I can't afford Unix on this new machine yet). I did copy a
file to the floppy and then did a dir to see how many bytes were free. This
seemed to reinforce the greater capacity.
Thanks for your patience. You can post replies but email will get to me much
quicker (I'm a little busy and this group has LOTS of reading required).
--
David M. Arasmith | arasmith@mathcs.emory.edu Internet
Emory University | {sun!sunatl,gatech}!emory!arasmith UUCP
Dept of Math and CS |
Atlanta, GA 30322 | I should be working! Gee....I wonder what's on TV?jacobs@cs.utah.edu (Steven R. Jacobs) (01/14/90)
In article <4871@emory.mathcs.emory.edu> arasmith@mathcs.emory.edu (David Arasmith) writes: > A strange thing happened to me this morning. I put a DS/DD 5.25" floppy > in the drive to format (1.2M drive). When the formatting was done I was told > (well you know what I mean) that the floppy was formatted to 1.2M? This > is NOT a high density disk (Nashua). So is: > > 1) the system lying to me about the capacity? > 2) the floppy actually formatted to 1.2M? > 3) the question way too stupid to answer? The answer is 2). Some brands of DS/DD disks will format just fine at 1.2M. Other brands will format, but give _lots_ of bad tracks. The real question is: How reliable will these disks be when you go to read data from them 6 months from now? Who knows. I wouldn't recommend cramming too much data on floppies that were not designed for the higher capacity. -- Steve Jacobs ({bellcore,hplabs,uunet}!utah-cs!jacobs, jacobs@cs.utah.edu)
M.Jones@massey.ac.nz (Michael Jones) (01/19/90)
In article <JACOBS.90Jan13161956@cmos.cs.utah.edu> jacobs@cs.utah.edu (Steven R. Jacobs) writes: > [....stuff deleted....] >The answer is 2). Some brands of DS/DD disks will format just fine at >1.2M. Other brands will format, but give _lots_ of bad tracks. > >The real question is: How reliable will these disks be when you go >to read data from them 6 months from now? Who knows. I wouldn't >recommend cramming too much data on floppies that were not designed >for the higher capacity. Yes, I've formatted a DS/DD disk to 1.2MB and tried to retrieve data from it over a year later, and yes, I did lose quit a bit of the data from bad tracks that weren't bad a year earlier. It's not to be recommended! (Spend the extra $1 on a HD disk to ensure that your data is safe.) ############################################################# # \|||/ Michael Jones # # / \ Phone: +64 +63 69099 # # / O O \ Fax: 63-505-611 # # =OOO====U====OOO= # # Rire gevrq Ebg17? - Mxwc hxd qjen jwhcqrwp knccna cx mx? # #############################################################