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From: sac90286@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Kubla Khan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: How reliable are "hole-punched" 720K disks at 1.44 MEG???
Message-ID: <1811@garcon.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 21 Aug 89 13:59:33 GMT
References: <1516@aws.cme.nbs.gov>
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Reply-To: kubla@uiuc.edu (Kubla Khan)
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Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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In article <1516@aws.cme.nbs.gov> durham@cme.nbs.gov (James H. Durham) writes:
>I have read a lot recently about punching/melting a hole in your average
>720K disk, then using it as a 1.44 meg disk.

I confess, it was my fault. :-)

>Now I have TONS of cheap bulk
>disks (DS/DD) anc converting them over would save me a LOT of money.  How
>reliable will these converted disks be...

I haven't had a whole lot of experience using them so far (having just bought
my 1.44Mb drive), but of the few disks I have punched out, about 50% have no
bad sectors (at least none show up when formatted with VERIFY ON) and the 
rest have had around 1 Mb of usable space. How these disks will behave in the
long run remains to be seen. I personally wouldn't trust anything important
on them...
 
>and, besides cosmetically, what
>are the differences between 1.44 and 720K disks?

I don't know for sure, but were I to hazard a guess, I'd say the 720s were
1.44s that flunked the factory test procedures. 

If you're worried about reliability, perhaps you should purchase the 
Biological Engineering disk puncher (the one designed by the CrackPot Engineer).
If you buy their $40 puncher, and ever come across a disk that refuses to
format, just send it to them and they promise to replace it with a genuine
1.44Mb diskette with no questions asked. Of course, this is based on the
premise that the company won't go broke replacing too many diskettes... :-)



Scott Coleman
kubla@uiuc.edu