Re: fdformat problems on Solaris 8

From: Colin B. (cbigam_at_somewhereelse.nucleus.com)
Date: 04/29/04 

Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 16:06:12 GMT

Richard B. Gilbert <rgilbert88@comcast.net> wrote:
> I have been unable to format a floppy disk with fdformat. Each attempt
> errors out with
>
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . e
> fdformat: can't read format data, I/O error
>
> I've tried this with different floppys, four different machines and both
> Sparc and X86 architectures.
>
> groups.google.com has many references to the problem but no solutions
> except, possibly, two discussions in Japanese.
>
> Does anyone know how to make this work?

I've noticed a few things about formatting floppy disks.

First of all as far as I can tell, fdformat is intolerant of ANY errors.
MSWindows format will suffer almost any indignity and mask out the bad
sectors on a disk that fdformat chokes on.

Also, the drives seem to get 'stiff' after a long period of disuse. Try
sticking a disk in, and running fdformat on it five or ten times in a
row. Chances are, you'll get farther on each pass. If not, then start
tossing in other disks.

Finally, floppies do deteriorate, and relatively fast! Going through my
stack of old cheap generic floppies, I found that roughly a third were
garbage, and another third were borderline (sometimes formatting cleanly,
sometimes not).

Good luck,
Colin

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