nhuang@vela.acs.oakland.edu (Ningjian Huang) (08/08/90)
Our school bought some 3M high density floppy disk with 1.6 MB. The problem is that they cannot be used in my computer (CompuAdd 386-25Mh). I even cannot format them through 1.2Mb floppy driver. The disk has no problem with other computers, and my computer has no problem with 1.2Mb floppy disk. If I use such a disk formatted in other computer, the error message will be "general failure in reading driver A...". Any experiences or suggestions? Thanks.
bbesler@vela.acs.oakland.edu (Brent Besler) (08/09/90)
Well the obvious solution is to get a real 1.2 Mbyte disk. They can be found for less than $100.
funkstr@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (Larry Hastings) (08/15/90)
+-In article <2407@vela.acs.oakland.edu>, nhuang@vela.acs.oakland.edu (Ningjian Huang) wrote:- +---------- | | Our school bought some 3M high density floppy disk with 1.6 MB. The problem | is that they cannot be used in my computer (CompuAdd 386-25Mh). I even | cannot format them through 1.2Mb floppy driver. The disk has no problem | with other computers, and my computer has no problem with 1.2Mb floppy | disk. If I use such a disk formatted in other computer, the error message | will be "general failure in reading driver A...". | +---------- The 3M box is being misleading. It's true that the disks technically hold 1.6Mb of information -- however, .4Mb of that is formatting information, leaving you with 1.2Mb of free disk space. In other words, these _are_ standard 1.2Mb diskettes. (I found out about this when someone brought back a box of 3M "1.6Mb" disks to a computer store I happened to be in at the time -- it turned out to not be the disks at all, it was his fault for running format incorrectly.) It is almost definitely not the disk's fault -- errors in 3M disks are rare. I would guess "user error" in this case -- you, or someone else, did something wrong. One more (somewhat rare) possibility is that your disk drive's heads are slightly out of alignment -- just far enough that disks formatted on another computer are unreadable. Your description of your problem isn't complete enough to make an exact diagnosis... -- larry hastings, the galactic funkster, funkstr@ucscb.ucsc.edu I don't speak for Knowledge Dynamics or UC Santa Cruz, nor do they speak for me "Cocaine is God's way of telling you you're making too damn much money" --Robin Williams