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From: winstead@faraday.ece.cmu.edu (Charles Holden Winstead)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: Formatting a 1.44 MB disk to 720 kB - easy!
Message-ID: <1991May18.173520.11272@fs7.ece.cmu.edu>
Date: 18 May 91 17:35:20 GMT
References: <1991May18.123021.7256@topaz.ucq.edu.au> <1991May18.055951.8941@fs7.ece.cmu.edu> <1991May18.071447.27367@midway.uchicago.edu>
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Organization: Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon
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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.
>-- 

Hmm.  At school, this is how I format high density disks on a DELL.  This is
run through Norton Utilities though.  Actually, even if it's formatted low,
the hole tells the DELL that it's high density unless I cover it.


-Chuck