Broken floppy disks

On 19 Aug 2007 at 20:45, Marvin Johnston wrote: There is the /u (unconditional) switch but IIRC, specifying /f used to result in an implied /u. e.g. /f:1440 was the same as /f:1440 /u. But maybe not in all versions. There were also a few undocumented switches in the older versions of FORMAT, such as the one for "don't ask for a console go-ahead, just format the darned floppy." (Used by the BACKUP utility)--was it /h? When you're under 2K or XP or other versions of NT, the driver first tries to determine the type of the disk you're trying to format by reading the first sector. If the disk contains some alien format, the driver can grind for a very long time before it figures that it doesn't recognize the format of the original. It is possible to write a formatter that operates under these OS-es that doesn't do the initial check. If you're running MS-DOS, though, there are plenty of other choices. I still ocaasionally use CONFMT to format diskettes in the background while I'm doing other things (if you want a copy, drop me a private email and I'll see that you get one). Microsolutions offered a similar product with the CompatiCard also. For formatting a batch of diskettes when you have more than one drive and are running DOS, you can't beat FORMATQM. (Just my humble opinion :) ) Cheers, Chuck