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From: ESR@SLACVM.BITNET (Ed Russell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Re: strange problem with DSDD floppies: they won't stay formatted
Message-ID: <90275.132814ESR@SLACVM.BITNET>
Date: 2 Oct 90 21:28:14 GMT
References: <3801@network.ucsd.edu>
Distribution: usa
Organization: SLAC Computing Services
Lines: 14

>I'm stuck with a hundred DSDD unbranded 5.25 inch floppies that I bought two
>years ago.  Now a week or so after I format them and put data on
>them the files disappear and the floppies appear unformatted.  At
>this stage, the error message 'track 0 unusable or bad" often
>appears when one tries to reformat them, but positioning the hole in the
>floppy correctly and then formatting them works, but only for about
>a week after which the floppies are again useless.  I'm curious why
>this should be happening and would like to know how to avoid this problem
>in the future.

You didn't say what kind of disk drive you are using.  Is it 1.2M (AT)?
If so, format of DD disks is notoriously unreliable.  If not, you might try
PCTOOLS DiskFix which has a "revitalize floppy" function to see if that
helps.