Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!hellgate.utah.edu!hellgate!jacobs From: jacobs@cs.utah.edu (Steven R. Jacobs) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: Formatting question (too good to be true) Message-ID: Date: 13 Jan 90 22:19:56 GMT References: <4871@emory.mathcs.emory.edu> Organization: University of Utah CS Dept Lines: 19 In-reply-to: arasmith@mathcs.emory.edu's message of 12 Jan 90 14:24:51 GMT In article <4871@emory.mathcs.emory.edu> arasmith@mathcs.emory.edu (David Arasmith) writes: > A strange thing happened to me this morning. I put a DS/DD 5.25" floppy > in the drive to format (1.2M drive). When the formatting was done I was told > (well you know what I mean) that the floppy was formatted to 1.2M? This > is NOT a high density disk (Nashua). So is: > > 1) the system lying to me about the capacity? > 2) the floppy actually formatted to 1.2M? > 3) the question way too stupid to answer? The answer is 2). Some brands of DS/DD disks will format just fine at 1.2M. Other brands will format, but give _lots_ of bad tracks. The real question is: How reliable will these disks be when you go to read data from them 6 months from now? Who knows. I wouldn't recommend cramming too much data on floppies that were not designed for the higher capacity. -- Steve Jacobs ({bellcore,hplabs,uunet}!utah-cs!jacobs, jacobs@cs.utah.edu)