costin@cogsci.ucsd.EDU (Dan Costin) (04/13/90)
How does one format a disk in an FDHD drive so it can be read by an 800K drive? 800K drives will format either 800K or 400K, for backward compatibility. Do 1.4M drives have no backward compatibility? -dan
rc3h+@andrew.cmu.edu (Ross Ward Comer) (04/13/90)
Apple's FDHD drive automatically checks which type of disk is in the drive and selects the proper format based on the disk type. The HD disks all have an extra hole opposite the lock-hole. If you insert a disk without that extra hole into an FDHD drive, the Mac will automatically treat it as an 800K disk. When the Mac asks if you wish to format a disk, it asks if you wish to format single or double-sided. Selecting double will give you 1.4M or 800K. Selecting single on a non-HD disk will format it as 400K. What this all means is that the FDHD is completely backwords compatible with Apple's previous drives. You simply need to use the right disk type to determine the format used. And it's incredibly easy to tell which disks are HD when you buy them ;-). ross rc3h@andrew.cmu.edu Carnegie Mellon University
Leo.Bores@f14.n114.z1.fidonet.org (Leo Bores) (04/14/90)
In an article of <12 Apr 90 17:19:47 GMT>, costin@cogsci.ucsd.EDU (Dan Costin)
writes:
DC>How does one format a disk in an FDHD drive so it can be read by an
DC>800K drive? 800K drives will format either 800K or 400K, for
DC>backward compatibility. Do 1.4M drives have no backward compatibility?
Simply putting an 800K floppy into the drive activates the copy program to
initialize it as either double or single sided (800-400K). Putting a 1.4M
floppy into an 800K drive gets you (sometimes) an 800K disk that can no longer
be re-formatted to 1.4M.
Leo Bores, M.D.
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