Floppys wont Format!!

[scarecrowdr]

Hi Good Peeps----1st PC WinXP Pro SP1 Half of SP2.ASUS K8N-E Deluxe Athlon 64bit.3000 @ 2.04
2nd PC WinXP Pro SP1 n a bit SP2 ABIT>761-686B (KG7) Rev1.0>>>1.2AMD Athlon.
I got at least 60 Floppy discs from my old AMIGA...Decided to FORMAT them n re-use in XP PC...My Old System 2nd PC will Format them n they be ok to use...My 1st PC WON't recognise them & Won't Format them...Any Ideas as to Why!!....THANKS ALL.

[Platypus]

Are they 1.44 M or 720K disks? Either way, with a pre-existing non-DOS format, Windows won't have a cue as to how to format them.

You may be able to reformat them from a DOS prompt using FORMAT /F:1.44 or FORMAT /F:720 according to the capacity.

However I would strongly advise against re-using old floppy disks in this way. I have never found re-used old floppy disks to be reliable, they check OK at the start but a very high proportion get file corruption after some weeks or months. Once they have held the same data for years, re-formatting and writing new data can't seem to hold. It may be successful if the disks can be bulk erased, but I've never had the opportunity to try it.

[scarecrowdr]

Hi Platypus---They be 1.44 but some don't say..others say--MF2DD 135TPI (80Tr)----or----DS/135 TPI SOFT SECTOR. Those be the ones i bought as Blanks.....Others were/are from Magazine...my old comp will Reformat but the new comp wont...I find floopys usefull for puting odds n sods on like notes from Notepad or Wordpad or other nick knacks...I know what ya mean when you say they get corrupted easy, had lots of them over the years n thrown em away..Thanks for the info...

[ski]

I've heard that newer floppy drives have difficulty recognizing old floppies.
Swap the floppy drives between systems, and see if that works.

[scarecrowdr]

Hi ski----Yes, It looks the case does that...My older pc has an older floppy drive n the New pc has a newer un with a 7:1 card reader built into it....
Good job i use a 256Mbt SD (secure digital) camera card most of time to move files from one to other..Quicker than unpluging n re-pluging the external HDD....Only reason i wanted to get these floppys to work is that I hate WASTE..So I will use these old floppys just to save some Office/Word files too on the older pc. OR--Just stop formating them n keep the ones that have the Amiga Games on for Posterity..They might be worth something in 10 years time!!...lol...Cheers M8.