Hello, >From my own personal experience, in Mac OS X, I've inserted 800k or 720k >(depends on which OS did the formatting) formatted disks, using an USB floppy >drive, and Tiger asked if I wanted to initialize the disc, giving me some >message that it can't read the disk or whatever.
Yes, that's the type of scenario I'm familiar with: an end user putting, say, a high-density diskette into a double-density drive, only to then be told that the disk is unreadable and then asked would they like to initialize it? However, the only conditions I'm aware of under which the diskette will then become unreadable for the proper drive are if the end user /chooses/ to initialize the disk, or some sort of mechanical failure takes place (e.g. a dirty or damaged read/write head starts scraping the media it's trying to read.) This: >So you are stuck. i had to get a guy in Canada to send me some 800k system 6 >discs for my Plus which I promptly ruined by sticking them in a 1.44 USB drive >to take a back up of them. ...makes it sound as though putting an 800k disk into a high-density drive is simply the Kiss of Death. I'm not saying that might not be the case, only that I myself am unfamiliar with how that would work. There's some sleight-of-hand taking place there I'm just not following. I'm not the smartest monkey in the cage, but it would seem to me that, provided the disk drive itself is in good shape, the user should still be able to eject the disk intact and in readable condition, no problem. Or so I would think. Perhaps it -was- a mechanical failure that took place in the above instance and I'm just overthinking this? ::scratches head:: Best, James Fraser -- ----- You received this message because you are a member of the Vintage Macs group. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/vintagemacs.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to vintage-macs@googlegroups.com To leave this group, send email to vintage-macs+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/vintage-macs Support for older Macs: http://lowendmac.com/services/
