Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!uxa.cso.uiuc.edu!gcw20877 From: gcw20877@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (George Wang) Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d Subject: Formatting 720K disks to 1.44 Megs HELP!! Message-ID: <1989Nov27.212809.7241@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> Date: 27 Nov 89 21:28:09 GMT Sender: news@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (News) Reply-To: gcw20877@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (George Wang) Distribution: na Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Lines: 33 I recently brought a Toshiba 3.5" 1.44 meg High Denisty drive in hope of being able to do a "trick" that is done on Toshiba laptops and IBM PS/2 computers... I wanted to do some high volume backups by using regular, low cost 720K generic disks and formatting them to 1.44 megs.. I heard that Toshiba drives are capable of doing this... I also have a Western Digital WD1006-RA2 controller which supports such "intelligent" drives.. I am also using Pheonix AT BIOS 3.10 However, I have not been able to format the disks at 1.44 megs.. It keeps on giving me invalid media/bad track 0... The funny thing is, is that I can use a legit 1.44 meg diskette, cover the high density hole and format the it at 1.44 megs even though technically the drive thinks it's a 720K disk... But this is ONLY if I use a REAL high density disk and not a fake 720K disk... My question is how can I get it to work.. Is it something with DOS or the BIOS..... I know Toshiba laptops and PS/2 can do this but I can't get mine to work.. (I am running PCDOS 3.2 by the way....) Any ideas? Please email as I don't keep up with the newsgroups... Thanks in advance, George -- George Wang University of Illinois gcw20877@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu