FORMATTING 720K DISKS TO 1.44 MEGS HELP NEEDED!!!

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Article #7663

#7663

From: George Wang
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 1989 22:02

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1799 bytes

I recently brought a Toshiba 3.5" 1.44 meg High Denisty
drive in hope of being able to do a "trick" that is done
on Toshiba laptops and IBM PS/2 computers...

I wanted to do some high volume backups by using regular,
low cost 720K generic disks and formatting them to 1.44 megs..
I heard that Toshiba drives are capable of doing this...
I also have a Western Digital WD1006-RA2 controller which
supports such "intelligent" drives.. I am also using Pheonix
AT BIOS 3.10

However, I have not been able to format the disks at 1.44 megs..
It keeps on giving me invalid media/bad track 0... The funny
thing is, is that I can use a legit 1.44 meg diskette, cover
the high density hole and format the it at 1.44 megs even
though technically the drive thinks it's a 720K disk... But
this is ONLY if I use a REAL high density disk and not a fake
720K disk...

My question is how can I get it to work.. Is it something
with DOS or the BIOS..... I know Toshiba laptops  and PS/2
can do this but I can't get mine to work.. (I am running
PCDOS 3.2 by the way....)

Any ideas? Please email as I don't keep up with the newsgroups...

Thanks in advance,
George

--
George Wang
University of Illinois
gcw20877@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu

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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!uxa.cso.uiuc.edu!gcw20877
From: gcw20877@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (George Wang)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: FORMATTING 720K DISKS TO 1.44 MEGS HELP NEEDED!!!
Keywords: 720K 3.5" FORMATTING
Message-ID: <1989Nov27.220237.20770@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 27 Nov 89 22:02:37 GMT
References: <539@cscnj.csc.COM>
Sender: news@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (News)
Reply-To: gcw20877@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (George Wang)
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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