On Wed 20 Mar 2019 at 21:01:00 (+0100), Anders Andersson wrote: > On Sun, Mar 17, 2019 at 5:43 PM David Wright <deb...@lionunicorn.co.uk> wrote: > > On Sun 17 Mar 2019 at 13:19:29 (+0100), Anders Andersson wrote: > > > I got myself a USB 3.5" disk drive and want to format a 3.5" HD disk > > > so that it Just Works™ as a standard MS-DOS floppy. > > > > I'm not sure that you really can. What's your reasoning for > > doing this? Are you just spoiling for an unnecessary fight? > > Or do you really want to boot off it? > > I want to use a floppy disk to transfer information between computers > and other devices which expects 3.5" HD diskette formatted for use > with DOS. Since it was the industry standard for "sneakernet" file > transfer for over a decade, I don't think it's a strange use case. > What did I miss?
I think *I* missed, or rather misread, the first two lines of your post (assuming the drive was what's commonly called a hard drive). I think I understand what you're asking now, so you can delete at least my first paragraph. Unless you've a stack of real 3.5" diskettes which you haven't yet got round to transferring onto a better format¹, then I think you probably wasted your money on the drive. The port that you plug your drive into would support a wide range of cheap drives that could be formatted with FAT16/32±VFAT if and as required. Or you could just use USB sticks instead, which I would recognise as being the modern sneakernet. Why limit yourself to 1.4MB?² ¹ There are scads of LPs, VHS tapes, and probably 78s, musicassettes, reel-to-reel, etc. that need conversion, but there's more excuse here for tardiness. ² Floppy storage appears to cost around 1$/MB. Without suggesting your devices could handle 10TB drives, the cost of storage on these can be as low as 2¢/GB. (Best Buy throws in a 32GB stick.) Cheers, David.
