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From: kurt@fluke.UUCP (Kurt Guntheroth)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Re: single sided disks
Message-ID: <379@dragon.fluke.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 22-Jul-86 11:57:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: dragon.379
Posted: Tue Jul 22 11:57:44 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 24-Jul-86 21:04:58 EDT
References: <252@pttesac.UUCP>
Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA
Lines: 20
Keywords: disks single sided

Single sided disks ARE usually double sided disks that have failed an
inspection on one surface.  This is a true fact.

Your friend with a MAC has only DETECTED one bad disk out of 10.  Possible
explanations:  (1) The bad spot happens to be in an intersector gap.  (2)
the bad spot is on an inner or outer track the MAC doesn't use.  Or most
hideously (3) Your friend happened to write a best-case set of bits onto the
bad spot so it worked, or the MAC doesn't check things too well until it
actually writes to a sector.

The "use single sided floppies" idea has come up over and over again.  Most
times it lasts awhile and goes away, as people chalk up disk errors that
trash their work or toys.  If you had an Apple-II or C-64 which wrote big
fat lazy bits on the disk, you might get away with it, but you have an Amiga
and are trying to get 800K on a disk.  My personal advice is, unless you
have the patience to reconstruct a blown file system by hand (ugh!), or
don't mind trashing the odd disk, the 10% is not that much extra to pay for
double sided disks.

PS:  I even had a double sided disk crap out on me once.