Path: utzoo!censor!geac!maccs!cs4g6ag From: cs4g6ag@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (Stephen M. Dunn) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: Formatting 1.2 Meg disks to 360K question Message-ID: <25AD7F7A.26599@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca> Date: 12 Jan 90 06:55:53 GMT References: <3226@ucrmath.UCR.EDU> <7715@nigel.udel.EDU> Reply-To: cs4g6ag@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (Stephen M. Dunn) Organization: McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario Lines: 26 In article jacobs@cs.utah.edu (Steven R. Jacobs) writes: $>Having just had this problem, I asked around and it seems that High Density $>disks and Double Density disks (used for 360k) do have physical differences. $The person that told you this was either joking or making it up to $disguise their ignorance. Physically, the two types of disks are $similar, with oxide covering the entire surface of the disk. The $difference is in the oxide itself. On the high density disks, the $oxide is a different material which requires a stronger magnetic $field to record information. The heads in many 360K drives are $not designed to produce a strong enough magnetic field to record $data on the high density floppies. That sure sounds like a physical difference to me. And also, as I understand it, it's actually the other way round. A 1.2M disk actually uses a weaker magnetic field, which makes 360K disks written in a 1.2M drive unreadable in many 360K drives. If the problem was that 360K drive heads didn't generate strong enough magnetic fields, then I should be able to format 1.2M floppies at 360K in my 1.2M drive. Well, it doesn't work any better in that drive than it does in my 360K drive. -- Stephen M. Dunn cs4g6ag@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca = "\nI'm only an undergraduate!!!\n"; **************************************************************************** If it's true that love is only a game//Well, then I can play pretend