Re: DSDD vs HD disks

[dempson@swell.actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

In article <1993Jul23.175944.29254@news.weeg.uiowa.edu> snelson@news.weeg.uiowa.edu (Steven Nelson) writes:
> I recently order 3.5 DS/DD disks from MEI (I even went for the Mac-grade).
> They charged me acoordingly, but shipped HD disks instead.
> 
> The honest thing would be to return them, but I need some disks NOW!  Most
> of my drives could care less about the extra hole in the corner, so should
> I just go ahead and use them, or will I have reliability problems in
> standard 3.5 drives.  I realize that I need to cover the left hole if I use
> them in a HD drive as 800k disks.  Advice?

I have come across a few high density disks with the extra hole covered
and being used as double density, so it seems to work, but I doubt
that the disks would be as reliable as double density ones.

However, you should note that once you format a high density disk in
this manner, you should always use it as double density.  DD uses a
stronger magnetic signal than HD, so reformatting the disk as HD won't
fully erase the DD information, and the disk will be unreliable.
-- 
David Empson                                                               
dempson@swell.actrix.gen.nz                                                
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand