BSR@19634.UUCP ("And now for something completely different...") (04/13/89)
Hi y'all,
Could some floppy disc guru tell me if the following is a good thing to do or
not? I bought a 520 ST with single sided floppy a couple of years back. I used
double sided discs and formatted them single sided, as one would. Now I have
just bought a double sided drive, and I would like to use the other sides of
all those discs I have collected. What I have tried to do is this: format the
tracks on side 2 using Flopfmt, then shift all the existing tracks on side 1 so
that consecutive tracks are now opposite each other on the disc. This diagram
shows the conversion process from SS to DS...
0123456789 flopfmt 0123456789 shift 02468ACEGI
SS ---------- -> ---------- -> ---------- DS
unformatted formatted 13579BDFHJ
I then redo the boot sector to specify the double sidedness.
The new tracks A to J are now clear and usable. The disk now has twice the
space as before.
My query is, is this a sensible thing to do? I have written a program that
does this, and it seems to work okay. Would anyone like to comment on it?
Please email me, and I'll summarize the response. Thanks
Barry Rowlingson
JANET: BSR@uk.ac.lancs.ph.v1 BITNET: BSR@v1.ph.lancs.ac.uk
maybe: BSR@19634.decnet.cern <- does this work for you?