Re: Why would I want to format a 1.4 meg diskette in ProDOS? ?

[glyn@cs.ualberta.ca (Devin Reade)]

In article <493sb9$d73@obelix.helix.net> tsetse@helix.net (an ugly bag of mostly water) writes:
>
>i hope you're not storing valuable data this way. my experience has been 
>that high density disks don't reliably format at low densities - 

This seems to be a factor of the hardware you're using, as indicated in
a thread on this topic earlier in the year.  I have about 600 3.5" disks
which get a fairly regular workout.  About half of those are DSHD.  The
failure rate is slightly lower for the high density than for the double
density disks.  In fact the only batch of disks for which I had a
significant failure rate was a bulk purchase of DSDD that were apparently
substandard.

This is using the standard Apple 3.5 drive.  My criteria for a disk
failure is:  If I get disk errors, I will reformat once.  If such a
disk gets another error within six months of reformatting, it is
deemed to be damaged and is destroyed.  Any disk at any time that has
bad blocks (as determined by ProSEL-16) or that will not take a
format is also discarded.

These observations apply only to 3.5" disks.  I cannot use 5.25" DSHD
disks, nor do I know anyone who can.
--
	Devin Reade	gdr@myrias.com