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From: lair@ellis.uchicago.edu (Scott A. Laird)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: Formatting a 1.44 MB disk to 720 kB - easy!
Message-ID: <1991May18.071447.27367@midway.uchicago.edu>
Date: 18 May 91 07:14:47 GMT
References: <1991May16.220514.23423@ariel.unm.edu> <1991May18.123021.7256@topaz.ucq.edu.au> <1991May18.055951.8941@fs7.ece.cmu.edu>
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Organization: THe Official Scott A. Laird Fan Club
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In article <1991May18.055951.8941@fs7.ece.cmu.edu> winstead@faraday.ece.cmu.edu (Charles Holden Winstead) writes:
>
>How's this for easy -- 
>
>put tape over the hole which tells your drive that it's high density.  Unless
>it's a PS/2, it should automatically format low density.  (PS/2's format all
>disk HD unless specifically told not to.)
>
>-Chuck


Bzzzt, wrong.  Sorry, simply putting in a low density disk (that's effectivly
what you get by covering the high density hole) will not make format format
it to low density, or at least not with any of the format commands I've used.
It simply gives a bad media error.  I'm not sure about the error for trying 
to format a high density floppy to low density (i.e., disk with h.d. hole
showing, and typing format /f:720), but it doesn't seem to auto-detect the
density.  Of course, IBM solved the issue quite nicely by simply ignoring
the hole, causing much wailing and gnashing of teeth for those of us who
have to transfer data off 3.5's from PS/2s.  New users _always_ format low
density disks to high density, and can never figure out why other computers
can't read them.  I'd really _love_ to know the reason they did that!
 

Basically, though, the DOS (at least 3.3/4.01) format commands default to 1.44 
Mb on 3.5" high density drives, unless you play around with your config.sys
(or format.exe) to tell it otherwise.  You must explicitly tell it to format
low density disks.

Scott.
-- 
Scott A. Laird            |  Any semblance of the above to anything is purely
lair@midway.uchicago.edu  |  coincidental, as it was the result of an infinite
The University of Chicago |  number of monkeys sneaking in to use my computer 
                          |  for the afternoon.