I got a message on my Vista that I need to reformat my A drive in order to be able to save on my floppy disk a game I am playing. I tried many floppies and I get the same message each time, except when trying to use one particular floppy. Could anyone tell me if it is safe to follow the steps on my computer to reformat?

Thanks,

Nick

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I got a message on my Vista that I need to reformat my A drive in order to be able to save on my floppy disk a game I am playing. I tried many floppies and I get the same message each time, except when trying to use one particular floppy. Could anyone tell me if it is safe to follow the steps on my computer to reformat?

Thanks,

Nick

(Are these disks brand new? If so, they may never have been formatted before. Which, of course, explains why Vista wants to format them.)

If you don't need whatever data is already on the floppy you want to save to, then formatting it won't hurt. Try a test: do that, save a game to it, remove it, then insert it again and see if Vista wants to reformat it yet again. If so, could be a h/w problem in your floppy.

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It has been a long time since I dealt with floppies.

a blank disk into your floppy drive (new)
should be safe if you use a:

Format a:<return>
this will just format a blank(or kill existing data for practical purposes)floppy disk.

Format A: /s
is not recommended, as it would attempt to copy system bootup information to the floppy. This should be un-necessary and potentially hazardous.

Legacy(old) game I am guessing? Be warned, many are set to run at very slow speeds, so may be unplayable on newer equipment.

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Janice

The quality of floppy discs and floppy drives is nowhere near what is was years ago when these were in common use. I also believe the legacy FDD software in current Windows operating systems is there for appearance only and not as good as in earlier versions.

I only have one FDD that I trust and that is a Toshiba USB FDD that came with a laptop I bought about 7 years ago. The only floppy discs that seem to work reliably are the ones I used with my DX2/66 and P2/300 systems back in the 90's

All floppy discs and drives I have bought since these appear to be "Write once/ Read Once-if you're lucky". The "The disc in drive A is not formatted" error message is pretty well par for the course these days. You will get it even on a freshly formatted disc.

My advice, save to a USB flash drive or HDD if possible.

T.A.

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My advice, save to a USB flash drive or HDD if possible.

Most new mobo's don't even have a Floppy Drive, a USB-stick or (pen-drive) is much better and can also be used as (virtual) A-Drive.

(But I do have a floppy drive (3.5'')) and 2 Mobo's do still have a Floppy connector).

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I have a USB floppy disk drive which I used to use to perform repairs on computers. With the widespread use of CD/DVD I have not used that for a long time. All current MBs that I know of will boot to the optical drive so the floppy is not necessary any more.
As for your game, it may require floppy if it was written that way. You never know with some of those old games, which may not run on new equipment.

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SETI@home classic workunits 4,019
SETI@home classic CPU time 34,348 hours

I have a USB floppy disk drive which I used to use to perform repairs on computers. With the widespread use of CD/DVD I have not used that for a long time. All current MBs that I know of will boot to the optical drive so the floppy is not necessary any more.

Looking at the specs of some of the newer motherboards it seems that the floppy drive is redundant, unless of course you use a USB floppy.

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Kevin

I would solve a bunch of problems and go out and get you a smallish cheap-o thumb drive and use an app that simulates a floppy drive. It solves a bunch of issues especially when you are needing a legacy type save from an older piece of hardware and on a machine that doesn't like them or doesn't have one. Not to mention you can have A BUNCH of floppy images on a little 4GB thumb drive!!

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

Thank you for the good advice everyone.

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If the drive itself has been in use for years, or was canablised from an old system, it may be the drive itself that is faulty. Most of the 'Write once - read if you're lucky' problems stem from the ancient (damaged) drive working more like a lathe, skimming off the surface of the disk as it writes.

Since '98 it has not been standard for floppy drives to 'read-as-you-write' to validate the write, so it does not get picked up till you try to read it.

Experience appears to back up the fact that modern floppy disks are less robust than older ones, but actually accusing the manufacturers of putting out previously rejected sub-standard product as new, would probably be going too far. Personally I would blame Vista. It was never validated as stable enough to run the programs I have to support. GOK if it has decent floppy support.

Old games on new machines is always fun. Especially when the first thing you see is a message that says Game Over. Play again?

Len

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I think I am. Therefore I am. I think.

Since '98 it has not been standard for floppy drives to 'read-as-you-write' to validate the write, so it does not get picked up till you try to read it.

Hi Len
For clarification. Do you mean Win 98 or 1998 ?

Just wondering

T.A.

Additionally, since it seems like you are experimenting with old tech that you are not terribly familiar with:

1) If it's a 3.5 inch floppy, it will have a lock/unlock switch on it in most cases - that's the write protection. It will be in one of the top corners. I cannot recall for certain which

2) If it's a 5.25 inch floppy, it will either have a notch cut out of the top to make it rewritable, or it will not. Back in the day, a lot of us had notch cutters for making clean and correctly positioned holes. If you see no notch cut out, or if the notch has been sealed over with tape, then you will need to make a notch or remove the tape to write to the disk.


At least a few old games actually would write to the original disks if allowed to. Make backups of your originals, and use them to play with.

Since '98 it has not been standard for floppy drives to 'read-as-you-write' to validate the write, so it does not get picked up till you try to read it.

Hi Len
For clarification. Do you mean Win 98 or 1998 ?

Just wondering

T.A.

Win98.

Though Win95 revision C was still being issued in 1998, so both really.
Because a version of DOS underpinned Win95 it was possible to set validate=On. Win98 stopped that. :(

Len

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I think I am. Therefore I am. I think.

Since '98 it has not been standard for floppy drives to 'read-as-you-write' to validate the write, so it does not get picked up till you try to read it.

Hi Len
For clarification. Do you mean Win 98 or 1998 ?

Just wondering

T.A.

Win98.

Though Win95 revision C was still being issued in 1998, so both really.
Because a version of DOS underpinned Win95 it was possible to set validate=On. Win98 stopped that. :(

Round about that transition, I was still having to do manual floppy-disk duplication runs of a few hundred each, two or three times a year. I found that the most reliable drive in my house was the one supplied in 1990 with my then state-of-the-art mono 286. I managed to fit it with a network card and DOS 6.2 drivers, so I could duplicate with a looping batchfile like

:begin
copy Z:*.* b: /V
pause
goto begin

I found that typically two or three out of each box of 100 cheap pre-formatted disks failed verification, but if I gave them a full re-format in the same drive, they usually verified OK at the next copy attempt. Since they were only going to be single-use data updates (read-only by customers), we reckoned that was good enough. We got a few returns, but mainly from postal service damage.

I also had to fit a genuine 360KB 5¼" drive in the same machine for the diehards: for those that don't know, you could read a 360KB disk in a high-density 1.2MB drive, but you couldn't reliably write it (the 80tpi head wouldn't magnetise enough of the disk surface to be picked up with a 40tpi head). Ah, standardisation....

Round about that transition, I was still having to do manual floppy-disk duplication runs of a few hundred each, two or three times a year. I found that the most reliable drive in my house was the one supplied in 1990 with my then state-of-the-art mono 286. I managed to fit it with a network card and DOS 6.2 drivers, so I could duplicate with a looping batchfile like

:begin
copy Z:*.* b: /V
pause
goto begin

I found that typically two or three out of each box of 100 cheap pre-formatted disks failed verification, but if I gave them a full re-format in the same drive, they usually verified OK at the next copy attempt. Since they were only going to be single-use data updates (read-only by customers), we reckoned that was good enough. We got a few returns, but mainly from postal service damage.

I also had to fit a genuine 360KB 5¼" drive in the same machine for the diehards: for those that don't know, you could read a 360KB disk in a high-density 1.2MB drive, but you couldn't reliably write it (the 80tpi head wouldn't magnetise enough of the disk surface to be picked up with a 40tpi head). Ah, standardisation....

I smell old tech magazines, fan dust, and magic smoke. Oh Richard is here! j/k(I understand where you are coming from, most people don't appreciate the standards we have albeit not perfect.)

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

Once I downloaded 40 MB of a GNU sources tape on my UNIX workstation at work then copied it on 5 1/4 inch floppies formatted DOS and carried them home to copy them on my AT&T Unix PC. I then compiled my first GCC (1,19 I believe) using the K&R C compiler of UNIX System V. Happy days!
Tullio

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I smell old tech magazines, fan dust, and magic smoke. Oh Richard is here! j/k (I understand where you are coming from, most people don't appreciate the standards we have albeit not perfect.)

LOL, you've seen my cellar then.

The point of setting up the 286 like that (it was a nice neat case, what would now be SFF) was so I could put it on a trolley and wheel it in front of the TV when a duplication run was needed. Disk copying from my armchair ;-)