Subj : Re: floppy disks
To   : boraxman
From : Bob Worm
Date : Thu May 01 2025 07:38 am

  Re: Re: floppy disks
  By: boraxman to Phigan on Thu May 01 2025 10:29:28

Hi, Boraxman.

 > Even DD discs written to in HD drives,
 > could have problems if read on a DD drive subsequently.

I was told that this is because the HD drives have narrower heads in order to use the narrower tracks on high density disks. As a side effect when you write to a DD disk with an HD drive you get narrow tracks written with bigger gaps between them.

My understanding is that real DD drives with wider heads then struggle to understand the data because it doesn't span the full track width. This is especially troublesome if there was previously data written to the full width of those tracks by a DD drive then overwritten an HD drive as it will detect a mixture of both.

I think. Now I have to go and read up...

BobW
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