Date   : Mon, 22 Mar 2010 19:18:42 +0000
From   : zeem.uk@... (Alex Taylor)
Subject: Re-using floppies

On 22 March 2010 06:58, Mike Tomlinson <mike@...> wrote:

>> and the fact that modern HD floppies come preformatted as
>>FAT12, so so reformatting them with a double-density format doesn't
>>work properly.
>
> I don't see how the choice of filesystem has an effect on the ability to
> format.

The idea was that reformatting a 1.44MB HD disk in a DD drive will
leave traces of the original formatting behind (as they're always
preformatted for DOS/Windows), causing the unreliability. Using a bulk
eraser is meant to eliminate this problem, as it will turn them into
completely blank disks that can be formatted in a DD drive more
reliably.

As I said, it's something I read once and have never tried in practice.

-- 
Alex Taylor