fdformat doesn't work anymore?

[Daniel O'Connor]

On Friday 28 November 2003 00:12, Malcolm Kay wrote:
> On Thu, 27 Nov 2003 19:57, Daniel O'Connor wrote:
> > I am trying to format a floppy in a FreeBSD 4.9-mumble system but it
> > spits errors on most tracks.
> >
> > I've tried several floppies, but the result is the same. If I do "dd
> > if=/dev/zero of=/dev/fd0c" it completes without error.
>
> So this proves you can get nulls from /dev/zero without error.
> But having done this will dd read from /dev/fd0c?

Good question :)

> The fact that the errors are pretty much the same on both machines, I would
> take as a strong indication the the diskettes are due for the rubbish tip.

Yeah, sigh :)

> And I've known batches of old disks to fail from physical distortion of the
> media while on the shelf through aging -- long term backup on floppies is
> useless or at least a big gamble.

Well, it sucks to have to buy new floppies in emergencies.. Maybe I should 
keep a set in the fridge or something :)

I bought some new ones and the fdformat fine, so I guess it was just dodgy 
disks.

Thanks :)

-- 
Daniel O'Connor software and network engineer
for Genesis Software - http://www.gsoft.com.au
"The nice thing about standards is that there
are so many of them to choose from."
  -- Andrew Tanenbaum
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