cctech Digest, Vol 29, Issue 43

[Sridhar Ayengar]

Patrick Finnegan wrote:
> On Thursday 19 January 2006 15:23, Terry King wrote:
> 
>>At 12:01 PM 1/19/2006 -0600, you wrote:
>>
>>>Subject: deformatting floppies
>>>
>>>
>>>I would have thought it best to take a magnet to a hd
>>>disk before popping in a 720k drive to be formatted,
>>>but it seems to not have any (or much) effect. Even
>>>using a chunky rare earth magnet! Can someone explain?
>>
> <snip>
> 
> One should probably point out that trying to format HD 3.5" media (aka 
> 1.44MB or 2.0MB) in a 720kB drive won't work reliably, no matter how 
> well you degauss the media.  The problem lies in the coercivity of the 
> media (and has been discussed on this list several times in the past 
> couple years I've been here).

Although one thing I've found with many years experience with PS/2's is 
that 1.44MB drives in PS/2's reliably can treat 720kB floppies as 1.44MB 
floppies without any trouble whatsoever.  I mean, without covering the 
hole or anything like that.

Peace...  Sridhar