DD versus HD 5.25" floppy drives

--- On Sun, 6/3/12, David Griffith <dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu> wrote: For maximum flexibility, you should use both a DD and a HD 5 1/4" drive in your enclosure. You can then install a toggle switch to switch the drive control lines if the interface board you're using only supports two floppy drives at once. If you bulk erase a DD disk, then format it/write to it in a HD drive in DD mode (double stepping), and then further update it with a real DD drive, it'll usually work. The problem really comes in when you update a disk in the HD drive that was written in the DD drive - the narrower head of the HD drive won't erase the full DD track, so the DD drive will pick up both old and new information at once, leading to problems. As long as you are mindful of this and are careful never to put yourself in a situation where the 80 track drive will be writing over 40 track data, it will work just fine almost always. But routinely writing DD disks in the 80 track drive, you're bound to forget sometimes, and wind up with a mess... So, in short, yes. It will work. But I'd still strongly suggest you use a real DD drive for writing DD disks - it's still going to be more reliable. -Ian