Re: Platinum 5.25" drive problem

[a_specto@alcor.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon) wrote:

>George Rentovich wrote:
>
><snip>
>>Clamping could be a
>>problem also. This would be with using  disks with no center hub (IBM HD
>
>If he's using HD disks in an Apple 5.25" drive, he has bigger problems than
>clamping!  HD disks cannot be reliably written to by Apple drives--they don't
>have enough write current.  (Reading would probably be fine, assuming that
>they can be written on a suitable drive.)
>
>Note, they may _appear_ to format and work for a while, but they will
>not be reliable over any period of time, if at all.

    Actually it's more serious than that. To the best of my knowledge,
and from past experience, High-Density 5.25 floppy disks (those with
a 1.2 MB format capacity on a PC)  are *completely* incompatible 
with a double-density drive. They cannot be format, read or written
to under any circumstance. If you attempt to use such a disk, you'll
simply get an endless report of errors and no recoverable data.

    It's a different story with High-Density and Double-Density 3.5
disks however. They are usable and interchangeable between
different types of drives by either adding or removing the extra 
notch hole, but I wouldn't recommend it--especially when it 
comes to storing valuable data.

Mitchell Spector
a_specto@alcor.concordia.ca