How to Format 1MB Floppy

[Olaf Hoyer]

On Mon, 7 Jun 2004, Daniel Ellard wrote:

> On Mon, 7 Jun 2004, Adam Retter wrote:
>
> > Also someone mentioned that these 1mb disks only format as 720kb - is
> > that true?
>
> That was probably me...  What I meant is that there's a built-in
> option to newfs_msdos for 720K disks, but I don't think there's one
> for 1MB disks.  If you want to use the entire disk, and the 1MB is the
> real size (not some phony marketing size) then you'll need to specify
> the geometry to the disk explicitly.  You'll need to get this from
> the disk vendor, I guess.
>

The raw capacity of those 3,5", DD disks is 1MB unformatted, and
formatted for _PC_ its 720 kb.

There were some different architectures, like Commodore Amiga and I
think Apple, that used a different format strategy and were able to use
more of that space.

(Anyone remember VGA-Copy under DOS? also some tool to get some real
weird formats done)

HTH
Olaf

-- 
Olaf Hoyer        ohoyer at gaff.hhhr.ision.net
Fuerchterliche Erlebniss geben zu raten,
ob der, welcher sie erlebt, nicht etwas Fuerchterliches ist.
(Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Boese)