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From: sl@van-bc.UUCP (Stuart Lynne)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Using single-sided disks double-sided.
Message-ID: <835@van-bc.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 15-Jun-87 13:08:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: van-bc.835
Posted: Mon Jun 15 13:08:11 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Jun-87 02:12:41 EDT
References: <5352@ut-ngp.UUCP> <1029@zog.cs.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: sl@van-bc.UUCP (Stuart Lynne)
Distribution: world
Organization: Public Access Network, Vancouver, BC.
Lines: 38

In article <1029@zog.cs.cmu.edu> tgl@zog.cs.cmu.edu (Tom Lane) writes:
>>Is there anything wrong with formatting disks labeled as single-sided as
>>double-sided?
>
>This seems to come up every 3 months on this newsgroup.  The official
>line is, as you say, that the back side of a SS disk is not tested.
>It might be OK, then again, it might not.  In this situation about all
>you have to go on is anecdotal evidence, so here's my $0.02 worth:
>I did it ONCE and got BURNT.  This was three or so years ago when DS
>3.5" drives were first becoming available.  The disks in question were
>Hewlett-Packard disks, which are made for HP by Sony; Sony has the
>reputation of being the best brand of disk (see postings in this group
>a couple of months back concerning independent tests).  So it wasn't a
>case of cheap off-brand disks.
>

I've never paid any attention to these warnings. At one point I even
recycled about forty old Lisa Workshop distribution disks. Most of them
formatted and worked ok.

I find that perhaps one disk in ten just won't format. So I guess the
formatting routines do a fair amount of checking. Anyway I either toss these
ones or use them single sided.

For disks that will see a fair amount of use, I at least try and start with
a new disk (SS). For backup I just recycle whatever is around, using new
ones if I don't have any old ones.

The bottom line is the Mac software does seem to be pretty good at finding
bad spots either during formatting or when writing. So far (touch wood) I
havn't had any problems. (And I was about the second person to get an
external double sided drive for my Mac 512k in Vancouver :-). Of course now
that I have a hard disk I very rarely use floppies for anything other than
backup.


-- 
Stuart Lynne	ihnp4!alberta!ubc-vision!van-bc!sl     Vancouver,BC,604-937-7532