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3.5" disks - single vs double sided?

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alank2

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I picked up some single and double sided low density disks from a used store over the weekend for my 720K T1100 plus.

Curiously, will the single sides ones work as double sided?
 
Probably. You won't hurt anything by trying. When disks were pricey, ones that failed manufacturing verification on only one side were sold as "single sided". Eventually, quality caught up with production and there was no practical difference between the two.
 
If the disks are the early single sided without the standard automatic shutter, it might be better to arrange a trade of those with newer disks. Let the old disks go to the old drives.
 
They seem like any other low density disk I've seen though I've not tried to open the shutter and see if it springs back.
 
I had a number of them with bad sectors and also a couple of bad track 0's. After using a bulk magnetic eraser on them though, they all format perfectly. I guess you really have to clear all the junk between sectors. I wonder if some of them were mac discs.
 
alank2 said:
I had a number of them with bad sectors and also a couple of bad track 0's. After using a bulk magnetic eraser on them though, they all format perfectly. I guess you really have to clear all the junk between sectors. I wonder if some of them were mac discs.
Click to expand...
every single time I've been forced to bulk erase a disk to get a good format, the success was short lived and bad sectors returned in short order
 
maxtherabbit said:
every single time I've been forced to bulk erase a disk to get a good format, the success was short lived and bad sectors returned in short order
Click to expand...

I wondered that. I'm going to go through a cycle with each disk where I read the whole disk, write the whole disk, read the whole disk again to see how they do.
 
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