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From: splin@hafez.berkeley.edu (Steven Lin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Re: help with formatting diskettes
Keywords: formatting
Message-ID: <13153@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 29 Apr 91 19:06:43 GMT
References: <10779@hub.ucsb.edu> <1991Apr25.171757.9078@meadow.uucp>
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU
Reply-To: splin@hafez.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Steven Lin)
Distribution: comp
Organization: U.C. Berkeley -- ERL
Lines: 22

In article <1991Apr25.171757.9078@meadow.uucp> py@meadow.UUCP (Peter Yeung) writes:
>In article <10779@hub.ucsb.edu> 6500erpa@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (Eric Palacio) writes:
>>Hi, 
>>Here's my problem:
>>Every time I try to format a DD diskette in drive b: 
>>(1.44MB, 3 1/2") giving the "format b:" command I get the 
>>following message:  
>>Invalid media or Track 0 bad - disk unusable
>>Format failure .
>>I am still able to read/write to any diskette on that drive,
>>DD or HD, and format HD diskettes with no problem.

I also had the same problem until I discovered that my disk cache (Hyperdisk)
was causing the problem.  The only solution I could find was to disable
caching of the floppies, maintaining caching of the hard drive.  No big
loss, since I rarely ever use floppies.  Oh, by the way, the floppy drive
was a 1.44 Mb Sony 3 1/2".  Hyperdisk doesn't have any problem caching
my 1.2 Mb Teac 5 1/4".  Unfortunately I couldn't get Hyperdisk to only
cache the Teac.  Hyperdisk says you can select which floppies to cache and
which not (using the df: option), but I couldn't get it to work.  
I had to disable caching of both floppies before formatting would work
flawlessly.