REQ: 1.72meg floppy format for XP

  • Thread starter Thread starter jona
  • Start date Start date
J

jona

Does anyone need to do this on a semi-regular basis ?

I've tried various software, the last being "SuperFormat v2.7" and
neither work in XP (being DOSless, I assume). Also, formating a
floppy with 1.72 meg capacity in DOS (on a W98 machine)
renders it useless for a WinXP system.

Ideas, suggestions ?

Cheers
Jona
 
Does anyone need to do this on a semi-regular basis ?

I've tried various software, the last being "SuperFormat v2.7" and
neither work in XP (being DOSless, I assume). Also, formating a
floppy with 1.72 meg capacity in DOS (on a W98 machine)
renders it useless for a WinXP system.

Ideas, suggestions ?

Cheers
Jona
Click to expand...

I did it once with WinImage. It allows formatting in several non-standard
formats, it works fromWin XP.
 
Oh yeah, sorry, it's not freeware, but it does it's job... Don't know any
freeware for this.
 
Does anyone need to do this on a semi-regular basis ?

I've tried various software, the last being "SuperFormat v2.7" and
neither work in XP (being DOSless, I assume). Also, formating a
floppy with 1.72 meg capacity in DOS (on a W98 machine)
renders it useless for a WinXP system.

Ideas, suggestions ?

Cheers
Jona
Click to expand...
Have been thru this. Those 1.7 floppies are not recognized by winXP so
like me, you gotta reformat them back to 1.4 to use on that box,
POKO
 
Does anyone need to do this on a semi-regular basis ?
I've tried various software, the last being "SuperFormat v2.7" and
neither work in XP (being DOSless, I assume). Also, formating a
floppy with 1.72 meg capacity in DOS (on a W98 machine)
renders it useless for a WinXP system. Ideas, suggestions ?
Click to expand...

I hope I can remember this correctly??
I was told to boot with a win98 startup floppy (hope u have one)
Find Super format on your HDD/directory
Insert the floppy to be formatted
Fire up Super format and it should do the business
It did for me
Bit of a work around, but at least u get a 1.72 floppy
HTH
Martin
©¿©¬
'removethis' to email
 
jona said:
I've tried various software, the last being "SuperFormat v2.7" and
neither work in XP (being DOSless, I assume). Also, formating a
floppy with 1.72 meg capacity in DOS (on a W98 machine)
renders it useless for a WinXP system.
Click to expand...
Biggest disk an nt based machine will recognise is 1.68 - try formatting to
that?
 
jona said:
Does anyone need to do this on a semi-regular basis ?

I've tried various software, the last being "SuperFormat v2.7" and
neither work in XP (being DOSless, I assume). Also, formating a
floppy with 1.72 meg capacity in DOS (on a W98 machine)
renders it useless for a WinXP system.

Ideas, suggestions ?
Click to expand...

XP has enough problems with regular 1.44 floppies. It only accepted
about half of mine from my old Win98 machine, none of the expanded
1.6M floppies. The only practical solution for moving files was to use
a splitter program.
 
Have been thru this. Those 1.7 floppies are not recognized by winXP so
like me, you gotta reformat them back to 1.4 to use on that box,
POKO
Click to expand...

Partly true---i just tried it and as GamePlayer said, biggest size can be
1,68M. In fact, when formatting to 1,72M i've got error near the end,
clicked cancel and capacity is exactly 1.745.408 B or 1,66M. Disc is in
spite of error readable just fine. Maybe i formatted that disc i mentioned
to 1,68 and not to 1,72 - i forgot.
 
XP has enough problems with regular 1.44 floppies. It only accepted
about half of mine from my old Win98 machine, none of the expanded
1.6M floppies. The only practical solution for moving files was to use
a splitter program.
Click to expand...

yes, good old times...you'd use winzip or similar and split a file on 5 or 6
floppies, took them to frined's, insert first, second....when inserted final
one, you'd get an error: "disc is unreadable", followed by strong
?!"#$%/())&!%" and repeating whole procedure.

But today, i think writing to CDR is actually faster than waiting to fill
1,4 M to one floppy...and maybe even cheaper.
Stupid thing, but nowadays i use my floppy solely for RAID drivers when
installing XP - stupid M$ doesn't let driver to be inserted on CD....what a
retards!
 
Maureen Goldman
yes, good old times...you'd use winzip or similar and split a file on 5 or 6
floppies, took them to frined's, insert first, second....when inserted final
one, you'd get an error: "disc is unreadable", followed by strong
?!"#$%/())&!%" and repeating whole procedure.
Click to expand...

I moved stuff from my five-year-old Win98 computer to the new XP
machine via floppies. No problem at all using splitter.exe for large
files (zipped first, if most practical). All floppies had been tested
out on the XP computer beforehand after I realized that many wouldn't
be accepted.
 
[email protected] said:
<[email protected]> typed:

Partly true---i just tried it and as GamePlayer said, biggest size can be
1,68M. In fact, when formatting to 1,72M i've got error near the end,
clicked cancel and capacity is exactly 1.745.408 B or 1,66M. Disc is in
spite of error readable just fine. Maybe i formatted that disc i mentioned
to 1,68 and not to 1,72 - i forgot.
Click to expand...
I would prefer not to tempt fate for .2 mgs.
 
SleeperMan said:
Partly true---i just tried it and as GamePlayer said, biggest size can be
1,68M. In fact, when formatting to 1,72M i've got error near the end,
clicked cancel and capacity is exactly 1.745.408 B or 1,66M. Disc is in
spite of error readable just fine. Maybe i formatted that disc i mentioned
to 1,68 and not to 1,72 - i forgot.
Click to expand...

Ja, but did you try to copy a larger than 1.4 meg file to the disk ?
 
Biggest disk an nt based machine will recognise is 1.68 - try
formatting to that?
Click to expand...

Firstly, thanks to everyone for their input.

Long story short is that I've again tried various methods and software,
including WinImage which SleeperMan mentioned. I've got as far as
completing a format (1.72 and/or 1.68 M, with or without errors) and
WinXP sees and reports the disk having 1'745'048 bytes or 1.66 Meg.
Copying a 1.5 Meg file to that disk is a no go. I'll just go with Maureen
and POKO on this one, and resign myself to the fact that XP is a poor
floppy disk handler ...... nevermind anything larger than standard.

Cheers again
Jona.
 
Firstly, thanks to everyone for their input.

Long story short is that I've again tried various methods and
software, including WinImage which SleeperMan mentioned. I've got as
far as completing a format (1.72 and/or 1.68 M, with or without
errors) and WinXP sees and reports the disk having 1'745'048 bytes or
1.66 Meg. Copying a 1.5 Meg file to that disk is a no go. I'll just
go with Maureen and POKO on this one, and resign myself to the fact
that XP is a poor floppy disk handler ...... nevermind anything
larger than standard.

Cheers again
Jona.
Click to expand...

So, i tried like you said:
First, i tried to copy adaware 6181 file with lenght of 1,694,720 bytes to
floppy i created other day to 1,72M and got error. Explorer said capacity of
1,66M, but gave me error at 3/4 copying. So, i formatted same floppy with
WinImage to 1,62M - format was success, copying of this file also went
perfect.
But, since first formatting showed 1,66M, i think formatting with 1,62M
still leaves a bit of space, it's just not enough for 1,72.
So i tried two other methods of formatting which WinImage allows: DMF (1024
cluster size) and DMF (2048 cluster size).
Results are:

formatting with 1,68M method gave capacity of 1.702.400 bytes (1,62 M)
1024 size gave capacity of 1.714.176 bytes (1,63 M - but here i've got
one unreadable sector, which is probably result of old floppy - i just
didn't buy new ones for ages, so i looked in my drawers...),

while 2048 size gave 1.716.224 bytes (1,63M - same single read error).

Note however that formatting with bigger cluster size leaves more wasted
space when copying several files to floppy and may cause more
incompatibility.

at the end i formatted my floppy to 1,68M again, copied same file to A: -
again perfect. occupied space was 1.694.720 bytes, free space was 7.680
bytes.

I hope this helps in any way.
 
SleeperMan said:
So, i tried like you said:
First, i tried to copy adaware 6181 file with lenght of 1,694,720 bytes to
floppy i created other day to 1,72M and got error. Explorer said capacity of
1,66M, but gave me error at 3/4 copying. So, i formatted same floppy with
WinImage to 1,62M - format was success, copying of this file also went
perfect.
But, since first formatting showed 1,66M, i think formatting with 1,62M
still leaves a bit of space, it's just not enough for 1,72.
So i tried two other methods of formatting which WinImage allows: DMF (1024
cluster size) and DMF (2048 cluster size).
Results are:

formatting with 1,68M method gave capacity of 1.702.400 bytes (1,62 M)
1024 size gave capacity of 1.714.176 bytes (1,63 M - but here i've got
one unreadable sector, which is probably result of old floppy - i just
didn't buy new ones for ages, so i looked in my drawers...),

while 2048 size gave 1.716.224 bytes (1,63M - same single read error).

Note however that formatting with bigger cluster size leaves more wasted
space when copying several files to floppy and may cause more
incompatibility.

at the end i formatted my floppy to 1,68M again, copied same file to A: -
again perfect. occupied space was 1.694.720 bytes, free space was 7.680
bytes.

I hope this helps in any way.
Click to expand...

Strangely enough, Adaware6181 is the file that instigated this whole
issue. I needed to give a copy thereof to an internet challenged friend.
Anyway, the diskette I managed to make with the Win98 machine
with 'Superformat' reads as follows on this WinXP machine:
capacity 1'745'408, used 1'694'720 and free 50'688 bytes. The XP
machine does not list the file in windows explorer though.

As you quite correctly mentioned, WinImage is not freeware and the
version (6.10.6100) I downloaded is apparently a full 30d evaluation
copy. Any attempted larger than standard format gives me the following
error messages:

Windows Error N. 6
The handle is invalid
<clicking OK gives me a further>:
Disk error n0 on track0, head0

Possibly the evaluation version is in fact *not* fully functional. Heck,
I even swopped out floppy drives just in case mine was on the blink.

Thanks for your input
Cheers
Jona.
 
Strangely enough, Adaware6181 is the file that instigated this whole
issue. I needed to give a copy thereof to an internet challenged
friend. Anyway, the diskette I managed to make with the Win98 machine
with 'Superformat' reads as follows on this WinXP machine:
capacity 1'745'408, used 1'694'720 and free 50'688 bytes. The XP
machine does not list the file in windows explorer though.

As you quite correctly mentioned, WinImage is not freeware and the
version (6.10.6100) I downloaded is apparently a full 30d evaluation
copy. Any attempted larger than standard format gives me the following
error messages:

Windows Error N. 6
The handle is invalid
<clicking OK gives me a further>:
Disk error n0 on track0, head0

Possibly the evaluation version is in fact *not* fully functional.
Heck,
I even swopped out floppy drives just in case mine was on the blink.

Thanks for your input
Cheers
Jona.
Click to expand...

Strange...
anyway, i suggest you use Winzip or Powerarchiver to span the file into two
parts. Just zip it and use spanning mode.
 
Back
Top