Re: [WinMac] Problems with PC Floppy Disks

cathyf@infocom.com
Thu, 24 Sep 98 13:40:43 -0500

>
>It's not documented, but i've always found that the Mac is a little
>"pickier" about floppy disks in general. Disks that formatted
>perfectly fine on a PC were rejected when i tried to reformat
>them as Macintosh disks.
>
>>From this one could maybe postulate the Mac is pickier about bad
>sectors on a DOS-formatted floppy as well.
>
>--Darryl
>
>> Since moving to System 8...I think
>> I finally found a good correlation between PC formatted disks that have
>> bad sectors and the occurrence of the problem. Any floppy disk - 720KB or
>> 1.44MB - that has zero bad sectors works fine with System 8's PC
>> Exchange; but when I use a PC formatted disk that has bad sectors crazy
>> problems usually occur. \
>>
>> Has anyone else found this? Is it a documented problem?
>

Yes! I have exactly the same problem on my powermac 8600/250. I know my
floppy drive is okay, because I've put it through its paces with TechTool
Pro 2 (read/write tests).

In my case it's the reverse situation - I need to reformat mac floppies
as pc floppies to send pc files to clients. I finally figured out that I
needed to run each one through Norton Disk Doctor first -- if it passed
the test, then I could reformat it as a pc floppy (although oddly enough,
sometimes I need to do it twice -- the first time it claims it's a
damaged disk, then it happily reformats it on the second time). But if
there were any bad blocks -- no matter how often I tried to reformat it,
no go.

This is in System 8.0. I don't recall having the same problem so much in
System 7.6.1.

My Quadra 650 in System 7.1, on the other hand, happily reformats any
floppy I stick into its disk drive.... including ones rejected by the
fussy 8600. The quadra doesn't care if the original disk is pc or mac
formatted or unformatted, it just chugs along and reformats it the way
you want it. Slow but sure -- actually, I've always preferred to format
pc floppies in the mac environment (both on my quadra and SE/30) for use
on a "real" or "virtual" pc, simply because it's always been so much
easier.

The versions of PC Exchange might be a little different, since they come
with the system for 7.6.1 and 8.0 (I had my own copy of MacLink Plus for
the quadra in System 7.1).

I'm certainly glad to know it isn't just ME!

                 Peace, Cathy Flick cathyf@earlham.edu

P.S. Be aware of an odd conflict with PC Exchange -- I found that it's
incompatible with Apple's latest version of Close View for some peculiar
reason. I never had any trouble with the old version on my quadra.

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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Thu Sep 24 1998 - 11:48:37 PDT