Bulk Erase 8" floppies

17 Sep 2003

...
  A hint : sort
the floppies according to density. I would be rather p..... 
if I bought a stack of 20 floppies, believing they were DSDD, and I got 
some SSSD ones.  
 Is there a way to tell visually if they are DS vs SS? Not all the 
 floppies have their original factory labels on them any more, and I know 
 there are some of each. 
I just checked some of mine, and there is not really "conclusive evidence". On
top of that, some SSSD floppies were rejected DSDD's. The good thing is, that I've
never seen a double sided that couldnt be used as single sided. The story behind this is
rather remarkable: when we talk about 3740 floppies (i.e. IBM labelled), the f?rst track
is always written as single-side single-density, as some drives and/or systems can detect
the disk format and/or re-assign defective tracks. So, selling "unknowns" as
SSSD should be safe, and if they get a DSSD or DSDD (yes, they exist!), they were just
lucky.

Nico

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Bulk Erase 8" floppies