Date   : Fri, 04 Sep 1992 15:54:25 PDT
From   : pallio.UUCP!dg@mis.ucsf.EDU (David Goodenough)
Subject: Re: 720K 5-1/4" diskettes

killer@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (Francis J Park) asks:
> Can't you just use standard 1.2MB floppies on a 720k drive?
> It seems since the media is the same, it should work.

Not quite. There *IS* a difference in media between IBM 1.2 meg
disks and IBM 360K disks / Quad density 720K disks. If you don't
believe me, try taking a 360K disk, and formatting it to 1.2 megs.
OTOH, as has been noted you can format 360K disks to 720K (or even
800K) in an IBM 1.2 meg drive: I have a couple of utilities to do
this, and use the 800K format for all my archival backups. It
provides by far and away the best cost per megabyte: 25 cents for
800K works out to about 32 cents per megabyte.
     dg
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 + SLMR 2.1a #1246 + Most GUI's I've seen are pretty gooey