6500erpa@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (Eric Palacio) (04/24/91)
Hi, Here's my problem: Every time I try to format a DD diskette in drive b: (1.44MB, 3 1/2") giving the "format b:" command I get the following message: Invalid media or Track 0 bad - disk unusable Format failure . I am still able to read/write to any diskette on that drive, DD or HD, and format HD diskettes with no problem. Besides, when I format DD diskettes from within WINDOWs 3.0, it works! I tried adding a /4 switch when I give the dos command, but i got the following message: "Parameters not supported by this drive etc.." What am I doing wrong? My system: 80286/12MHz DOS 3.3 20 MB hard drive. 1 floppy 5 1/4" 1 floppy 3 1/2" (HD) I will appreciate any help. Thank you Eric Palacio 6500erpa@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu
ntaib@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Nur Iskandar Taib) (04/25/91)
Try format b: /n:9/t:80 -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Iskandar Taib | The only thing worse than Peach ala Internet: NTAIB@AQUA.UCS.INDIANA.EDU | Frog is Frog ala Peach Bitnet: NTAIB@IUBACS ! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
py@meadow.uucp (Peter Yeung) (04/26/91)
In article <10779@hub.ucsb.edu> 6500erpa@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (Eric Palacio) writes: >Hi, >Here's my problem: >Every time I try to format a DD diskette in drive b: >(1.44MB, 3 1/2") giving the "format b:" command I get the >following message: >Invalid media or Track 0 bad - disk unusable >Format failure . >I am still able to read/write to any diskette on that drive, >DD or HD, and format HD diskettes with no problem. The defaults used by FORMAT is to format HD diskettes on 1.44Meg drives. The options you should use to format DD diskettes are format b: /f:720 (for DOS 4.01) or format b: /t:80 /n:9 (for DOS 3.3) >Eric Palacio 6500erpa@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu -- Peter Yeung Amdahl Canada Ltd., Software Development Center 2000 Argentia Road, Plaza 2, Suite 300 Mississauga, Ont. L5N 1V8 Phone: (416) 542-6300 Fax: (416) 858-2233
splin@hafez.berkeley.edu (Steven Lin) (04/30/91)
In article <1991Apr25.171757.9078@meadow.uucp> py@meadow.UUCP (Peter Yeung) writes: >In article <10779@hub.ucsb.edu> 6500erpa@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (Eric Palacio) writes: >>Hi, >>Here's my problem: >>Every time I try to format a DD diskette in drive b: >>(1.44MB, 3 1/2") giving the "format b:" command I get the >>following message: >>Invalid media or Track 0 bad - disk unusable >>Format failure . >>I am still able to read/write to any diskette on that drive, >>DD or HD, and format HD diskettes with no problem. I also had the same problem until I discovered that my disk cache (Hyperdisk) was causing the problem. The only solution I could find was to disable caching of the floppies, maintaining caching of the hard drive. No big loss, since I rarely ever use floppies. Oh, by the way, the floppy drive was a 1.44 Mb Sony 3 1/2". Hyperdisk doesn't have any problem caching my 1.2 Mb Teac 5 1/4". Unfortunately I couldn't get Hyperdisk to only cache the Teac. Hyperdisk says you can select which floppies to cache and which not (using the df: option), but I couldn't get it to work. I had to disable caching of both floppies before formatting would work flawlessly.