Can a 1.44 MB flopp drive read 1.7 MB disks?

[VigilanteCS]

Hi, I have an old Toshiba T4800CT laptop and it's got a 1.44 meg 3 1/2" floppy. I was wondering if it can read 1.7 meg disks becuase my friend has a copy of windows 95 on floppy on 1.7 disks. Will I be able to install since it's on 1.7 disks?

 

[ChicagoPCGuy]

Originally posted by: VigilanteCS
Hi, I have an old Toshiba T4800CT laptop and it's got a 1.44 meg 3 1/2" floppy. I was wondering if it can read 1.7 meg disks becuase my friend has a copy of windows 95 on floppy on 1.7 disks. Will I be able to install since it's on 1.7 disks?

Ok, 1.7 never existed. There has always been 720K, and 1.44MB disks, and in the Asiatic regions you would also find 2.88MB floppies (which never caught on here in the US), but there was never such an animal as 1.7 MB floppies. Ever.

 

[DaveSimmons]

^ true for standard formatting

But I believe MS used the equivalent of "overburning" on some of their products before they switched to CDs. It was custom formatting / duplication to pack in more data.

If these are true MS labeled original diskettes and not copies then I think they will work in any 3.5" drive.

 

[SilentRunning]

Well 1.44MB floppies are really 2.0MB unformatted.

EDIT

DMF Format

 

[ChicagoPCGuy]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
^ true for standard formatting

But I believe MS used the equivalent of "overburning" on some of their products before they switched to CDs. It was custom formatting / duplication to pack in more data.

If these are true MS labeled original diskettes and not copies then I think they will work in any 3.5" drive.

Interesting. I never ran across them. I had a few sets of Windows 95 floppies (my god, all twenty or so?) and they were all 1.44MB. Perhaps MS switched how they did floppies? One would also think that this type of non-standard format might cause issues in some floppy drives, as PC hardware is *kinda* standard. Floppy drives could always be finicky about media, so I guess he should give it a shot and see what happens. Probably will work as you say, here's fingers crossed for him!

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: SilentRunning
Well 1.44MB floppies are really 2.0MB unformatted.

EDIT

DMF Format

Thanks, I didn't think my memory was completely shot yet 🙂

"Back in 1995, Microsoft came up with a way to fit more data on floppy disks so that they could ship their software on fewer diskettes. Shortly therafter, everything moved to CDs, and you'd be hard-pressed to find commercial software shipped on a floppy. Fortunately, the format is still useable for those who still use floppies to store and move data."

 

[VigilanteCS]

Originally posted by: ChicagoPCGuy

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
^ true for standard formatting

But I believe MS used the equivalent of "overburning" on some of their products before they switched to CDs. It was custom formatting / duplication to pack in more data.

If these are true MS labeled original diskettes and not copies then I think they will work in any 3.5" drive.

Interesting. I never ran across them. I had a few sets of Windows 95 floppies (my god, all twenty or so?) and they were all 1.44MB. Perhaps MS switched how they did floppies? One would also think that this type of non-standard format might cause issues in some floppy drives, as PC hardware is *kinda* standard. Floppy drives could always be finicky about media, so I guess he should give it a shot and see what happens. Probably will work as you say, here's fingers crossed for him!

Do you have any more sets of Win 95 on floppy that I could buy from you?

 

[ChicagoPCGuy]

Originally posted by: VigilanteCS

Originally posted by: ChicagoPCGuy

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
^ true for standard formatting

But I believe MS used the equivalent of "overburning" on some of their products before they switched to CDs. It was custom formatting / duplication to pack in more data.

If these are true MS labeled original diskettes and not copies then I think they will work in any 3.5" drive.

Interesting. I never ran across them. I had a few sets of Windows 95 floppies (my god, all twenty or so?) and they were all 1.44MB. Perhaps MS switched how they did floppies? One would also think that this type of non-standard format might cause issues in some floppy drives, as PC hardware is *kinda* standard. Floppy drives could always be finicky about media, so I guess he should give it a shot and see what happens. Probably will work as you say, here's fingers crossed for him!

Do you have any more sets of Win 95 on floppy that I could buy from you?

See my PVT reply.

 

[Zepper]

Yes, M$ did use a special extended format on some of their distribution diskettes quite a while back (some other companies used the format too). They should read fine on standard 1.44 floppy drives - just whatever is reading them has to be able to recognize the descriptor byte on them. Most M$ OSes (DOS 6.22 and up) can recognize the descriptor byte. Unfortunately it wasn't a stable format and the disks often went bad (M$ dropped the practice pretty quickly) and older drives that have deviated from standard alignment may have difficulty with them too. They can be read but not written or DISKCOPYed with normal tools.
. A program called CopyQM can read, write and DISKcopy the format if your OS can't - it runs under DOS I think (I have also successfully run CopyQM in command line sessions in all versions of Win except XP, but that's only because I've never had to try it under XP). Should still be easy to find CQM on the web, just search for it. If can't find, PM me with your email address.
. If the disk seems to be unreadable with several different floppy drives then you may need to use something like SpinRite ( http://www.grc.com ) to try to recover the data.
. I have several versions of Win 95 (I think 95C was the last) on CD here and there are procedures out there on the web for making floppy sets from the CD. You know what to do... IMO, Win 95 should have been released into public domain long ago - when is the last time you heard of anyone actually buying a license for it???

.bh.