Formatting Floppies

[DoctorReno]

Is there anyway to format a floppy to exceed the 1.44MB standard for the purpose of transfering files. I'm thinking there must be since MS used to distribute floppies formatted to something like 1.6x MB.

If there is a way would you let me know in detail how to do this.

Thanks

[John Prophet]

yep. I think u can get em to 1.66. The progs say 1.72 but seems as if it reads out as 1.66

I found one http://members.tripod.com/ieeecrce/i...ons99/tformat/

I think there are lots of progs for this.

JP

[DoctorReno]

Thank John... you are consistantly a reliable source for good info.

[John Prophet]

shows I spend 2 much time online! lol

[Bovon]

I have two 2.88 mb floppy drives I bought a long time ago to experiment with..but never did.. I 'think' it takes a 2.88 mb diskette, but not positive. anybody who wants these two drives can have them for the price of mailing...

[DoctorReno]

I have one IBM 2.88MB drive but the power connector is not the standard floppy power connector and you have to remove the case to even get at it so I've never hooked it up.

Also it's not practical because I'm doing this to copy files to an old laptop that only has a 1.44 drive (no CD) so the 2.88 disk cannot be read by the laptop.

Finally, it's my understanding that the 1.44MB floppy works in the 2.88 drives and the drive formats them as 2.88 so no special disks are needed. I could be wrong once again.

[Bovon]

Originally posted by DoctorReno

Finally, it's my understanding that the 1.44MB floppy works in the 2.88 drives and the drive formats them as 2.88 so no special disks are needed. I could be wrong once again.

Hmmm, thats what I thought when I bought them (used) at a computer show..then one of my friends said he didn't believe a 1.44 mb diskettes would format to 2.88 mb..so, I dropped the drives in the junk box and that is where they have stayed.. I may now connect one up to a machine and see if it will do that.

These I have are identical to any other 1.44 mb drive I have seen and setup..cabling and power connectors appear to be the same.

[DoctorReno]

Yep the main drawback of the 2.88 drives is that the disks cannot be used in anything but a 2.88 drive. So both machines have to have the 2.88 to trade disks. And this was about the time that CD burners were coming out which made floppies of any capacity a dinosaur.

[wju425]

You cannot format an 1.44 floppy into 2.88. The 1.44 do not have high enough density to do it. There was 2.88 floppies on the market but they weren't popular enough to keep. The cd burners may have something to do with it. I have an old dos program (vgacopy) that'll format an 1.44 up to 1.8.

\o/ Billy

EDIT: There's a reader that comes with such formatting programs but windows has a built in reader to read floppies higher than 1.44.

[DoctorReno]

Thanks for correcting me Billy. I'll admit to being wrong more often than not... lol.

What I'm looking for is a way to format to higher than 1.44 MB capacity that will work in DOS to transfer files to a laptop without a windows OS yet installed.