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From: consp06@bingsuns.cc.binghamton.edu (Robert Konigsberg)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: 360K Disks Formatted on 1.2M Drives read on 360K Drives
Message-ID: <3426@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
Date: 7 May 90 01:51:46 GMT
Sender: usenet@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu
Reply-To: consp06@bingsuns.cc.binghamton.edu (Robert Konigsberg)
Organization: SUNY Binghamton
Lines: 31

Here's a wierd one:

I formatted a 360K Disk on a 1.2M drive using Norton's Safe Format.

When I brought it to a machine that only had a 360K drive, it wouldn't
read it.  That's okay, I understand that this could happen due to
compatability problems.  

But.. at the time, I desparately needed to get my data from this
particiular disk
and drive.  Norton Utilities could not read the disk, and suggested that
I use Maintainance mode

c:> NU /M

I ran maintainance mode.  Every time I tried to read ANY sector, I came up with
a "data not found" or "data error" error.. something along the lines of
"I can't read your data.  Psyche!"  It would then go to the
display-sector screen, where it showed the sector, correctly.  WELL! 
What's this?  The disk IS readable?  I guess what happened is that
NORTON UTILITIES made a best guess while reading ths sector.  OKAY..
HERE'S THE QUESTION.

How does it read a sector in maintainance mode?  I want to be able to
implement the same idea into a program that will best guess a disk into
readability - understanding that there are no guarantees (Sort of like
the Mac SUM-UTILS Floppy Recover).

Also, did this make sense?

						-Rob Konigsberg