Need help with retrieving data from a DOS 2.11 formated floppy disk - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

7 May 2001

On May 7, 14:14, jimmy tsai wrote:

...
  The company I work for has a machine that runs on DOS
2.11
 There are some data on that machine that we need to retrieve. The
 information is transfered from that old machine to a 1.44mb floppy.

 When we put the floppy into our pentium winNT4 computer , we can not
 read the information on the floppy. The NT os simply says it does not
 know what format the files are at. 
I'm pretty sure 1.44M/HD disks didn't appear until DOS 3.  Chances are the
old machine has a double-density 720K drive, and if so you really shouldn't
be putting 1.44M disks in it (they're a different coercivity).  What you
end up with is 9 sectors per track on a disk that the newer machine
recognises as high density 18 sectors per track, so it tries to read it at
double the data rate, and fails to find anything useful.  If I'm right, you
need to find some proper double density disks, distinguishable by not
having the square hole on the right.

-- 
Pete						Peter Turnbull
						Network Manager
						University of York