🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1hd6sbINNsvq@agate.berkeley.edu> tedcrum@garnet.berkeley.edu (Ted Crum) writes:
>
>Could the original poster be running afoul of one of the unformattable
>format programs? I find these odious. To get the convenience of a dos 5.0
>format without unformat files being written, I use Norton 4.51 safe format
>using the "dos format" option. It readily formats hd 3-1/2's to ld. So will
>dos 3.3 if you remember the options to use. I bet 5.0 works if you can
>defeat the unformat provision.

All it takes is a "/U" switch to block the saving of unformat data.  I
think the problem goes deeper than this (he had, after all, tried
erasing the disks with a magnet, which would leave no old format to
save).

I've seen several theories posted and exchanged some email with the
original poster, but I've yet to see any explanation (including my own)
that stands up under close scrutiny.  I don't have any low density
drives to play with at the moment, but I know that I've used 5.25" HD
disks in old 360K drives in the past.  The only problem came when I
tried to reformat them back to 1.2MB -- I had to bulk-erase them first.

Bob Nichols
AT&T Bell Laboratories
rnichols@ihlpm.ih.att.com