Re: HD floppies in a DD drive.

[rubywand@aol.com (RUBYWAND)]

Tom Zuchowski <cd003508@interramp.com> writes
>>
My own experience with three 3.5 drives is that none of them will reliably

read a HD disk even when it has just been formatted in that same drive.
<<


In article <4nl3t2$5pd@louie.csun.edu>, hbcsc419@huey.csun.edu writes:

William E. Krantz, Jr. <wkrantz@voicenet.com> writes
>>
....I know from sad experience that you CAN format and use the
1.44MB diskettes in a conventional A2 800K drive (getting 800K capacity,
of course!), but then a few weeks later you'll find that you are getting
fatal disk errors and will have lost your data.
<<

>I'd have to differ with you on this one. I've been using HD disks in my
>Apple 3.5" 800k drive for 2 years now, and have had no fatal disk errors.
>I have the rare occurence of a file being corrupted, but that could
happen
>on a DD disk just as easily as on a HD disk. One disk in particular, I've
>been saving Appleworks and other word processor files on since 1994. It's
>a HD disk, and has given me no trouble. Perhaps its the quality of media
>you used. Some companies make good disks, while others make cheap disks,
>passing the savings AND low quality down to the consumers. I've been
using
>Dysan and Maxell disks. They seem to be good quality disk manufacturers.
>

     HD diskettes seem to work okay in our standard 3.5" 800K IIgs drives.
However, we have never taken any special care to purchase name brand "high
quality" HD diskettes. Some of the classier HD's may well employ a higher
bias oxide formulation.

     As many also-PC users will recall, it was once standard procedure to
punch a hole in the left corner of DD 3.5" diskettes and use them for
1.44MB HD's. The DD's were a lot cheaper and usually worked fine.

     So; if one purchases a box of 100 cheapo formatted HD's at
Phreak-Mart, there is a decent chance that the HD's are from a batch of
DD's which were format-able as HD's. These would, naturally, work fine as
800K diskettes; whereas, some Premium Quality HD's may not be useable.
   



Rubywand