Subj : Re: floppy disks
To   : Bob Worm
From : boraxman
Date : Thu May 01 2025 11:18 pm

On 01 May 2025 at 07:38a, Bob Worm pondered and said...
 
 BW>   Re: Re: floppy disks
 BW>   By: boraxman to Phigan on Thu May 01 2025 10:29:28
 BW> 
 BW> Hi, Boraxman.
 BW> 
 BW>  > Even DD discs written to in HD drives,
 BW>  > could have problems if read on a DD drive subsequently.
 BW> 
 BW> I was told that this is because the HD drives have narrower heads in
 BW> order to use the narrower tracks on high density disks. As a side effect
 BW> when you write to a DD disk with an HD drive you get narrow tracks
 BW> written with bigger gaps between them.
 BW> 
 BW> My understanding is that real DD drives with wider heads then struggle to
 BW> understand the data because it doesn't span the full track width. This is
 BW> especially troublesome if there was previously data written to the full
 BW> width of those tracks by a DD drive then overwritten an HD drive as it
 BW> will detect a mixture of both.
 BW> 
 BW> I think. Now I have to go and read up...
 BW> 
 BW> BobW

That was my understanding too, after reading some technical explanations on the matter.

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