Re: No HDs on my //e?

[spector@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

In article jdb8042@tamsun.tamu.edu (John Donald Baker) writes...
> 
[Explaination to why 5.25 High Density floppies do not work in DD drives]
>
>The same is true for 3.5" disks.  Never, ever use a HD disk in a drive
>that was not made for it (original Mac drives, UniDisk 3.5's, Apple
>3.5 Drive).  Further, never intentionally format a HD as DD or vice
>versa.  You'll lose your data in the long run.  The disks were not
>made to be formatted in a manner inconsitent with their labelling.

	Perhaps it's _technically_ unsafe to format 1.44mb HD disks as
800k DD, but it differs from trying to format 1.2mb HD 5.25" PC disks
on a standard Apple II 5.25 drive (ie, as 143k). The later is virtually
impossible, I've tried formatting a variety of 1.2mb High Density 5.25
on all kinds of Apple II 5.25 drives -- Disk ][, DuoDisk, Apple 5.25,
Japanese (Apple II) slimline clones. Most of the time software will 
refuse to format the media, or at the very least, you'll get a formatted
ProDOS disk with random errors all over. Even if there are no errors, the
drive heads make a funny clattering sound trying to verify the surface, so
I've obviously not risked storing data on these.

	OTOH, formatting so-called 1.44mb High Density disks (with "HD"
stamp and second square notch) as 800k or lower, work perfectly from my
experience. As well, I've managed to format HD 3.5 at lower sizes on
Amiga 880k, Macintosh 800k and IBM 720k floppy drives. Some of these
disks have had data sitting on them over a year now, yet no bad blocks
or lose of data has occurred. Still, if there truely is a danger  
formatting HD diskettes as 800k on my GS, I'd like to know... :)

>John D. Baker  ->A TransWarp'802'd Apple //e CardZ180 Z-System nut//
>Internet:  jdb8042@tamsun.tamu.edu, @blkbox.com, jdbaker@taronga.com
>BBSs:  JOHN BAKER on PIC of the Mid-Town [(713) 961-5817] 1:106/31,
>The Vector Board [(716) 544-1863], Z-Node #45 [(713) 937-8886]

Mitchell Spector
m_spect@pavo.concordia.ca / spector@vax2.concordia.ca