Multibooter

I have an old Iomega clik! PCMCIA drive, several 40MB clik! disks and a USB Dock for the PCMCIA drive. I have been wondering whether this is just old, obsolete and useless computer junk, or whether this clik! drive could be still useful for some special purpose under DOS, Win98 or WinXP, in 2011. I have used clik! disks via a PCMCIA interface and via USB. There exists also a parallel port dock for the clik! drive, which I never got. a) PCMCIA interface The clik! disk is inserted into the clik! PCMCIA card. This clik! disk inside the clik! PCMCIA card was recognized immediately under Win98 when inserted into the PCMCIA slot of my old laptop, because I had installed for my zip and jaz drives IomegaWare v2.2.1, which is probably the least buggy version, a long time ago. b ) USB interface When the clik! disk is inside the Clik! PCMCIA card, and both are inserted into the USB clik! dock model C40-D, the 3 together as seen/detected as a USB mass storage device. Under Win98 (with nusb) and under WinXP the USB dock+PCMCIA card+clik! disk are detected and installed automatically, no user intervention is required. Here is a list of characteristics of clik! disks and clik! drives, which speak AGAINST using them at all: - clik! disks are quite slow. Checking the disk, for example, with Norton Disk Doctor, including a surface test, takes about 27 minutes - the clik! disks are special miniature disks and the clik! drives cannot be used with regular floppy disks, in contrast to LS-120 drives, for example - the 40MB capacity of a clik! disk makes clik! disks way too small for today's storage requirements - clik! disks can be made bootable, but I don't know which special benefit it would have to boot from 40MB clik! disks. - clik! disks, when used inside the PCMCIA slot, instead of inside the external USB dock, get hot, maybe 50 degrees centigrade. No idea how reliable magnetic media is, if it gets baked at such a temperature. The only use I could imagine of the Iomega clik! USB docking station would be --- to serve as a docking station/USB adapter for an Imation/Accurite LS-120 PCMCIA drive. The clik! USB dock requires (this is a must) its own 5V power supply, a standard external power supply, with normal polarity as used for most current USB 2.0 mass storage devices. The Imation/Accurite LS-120 PCMCIA drive usually works with power from the PCMCIA port, but came with an optional 5V external power supply, which had a 5V-plug with a REVERSED polarity, as found with some older USB 1.1 mass storage devices. I am just afraid of destroying both the (rare) clik! USB dock and the Imation/Accurite LS-120 PCMCIA drive in such an experiment. Any ideas, suggestions or cautionary notes? I am attaching a screen shot of a clik! disk formatted to UDF 2.01. clik! disks are usually formatted FAT16. The Iomega tab in the screen shot gives access to the tools of IomegaWare v2.2.1 (e.g. Drive Info, Drive Sleep Time, Drive Diagnostics, Disk Info including date manufactured and Protection Status (write protect, password protect). clik1 disks have no sliding tab to switch beween write-protected and write-enabled. The selection "Make drive non-removable" is greyed out and de-selected. The context menu of the clik! drive contains the selections "Iomega Format" and "Iomega Protect". Iomega Format can format a UDF-formatted clik! disk back to FAT16. Any ideas what else clik! drives could be used for in 2011?

This is the unregistered shareware version 5.30 (check vgacopy.cfg in hex editor). I am using the full retail version which I bought many years ago in a computer store on a CD. According to the author (vganleit.exe, around line 1180) the shareware version is fully functional, only a 25 sec nag at the beginning and an extra page displayed when exiting. The German text displayed in vganleit.exe can be saved as VGANLEIT.ASC by pressing 'F' when vganleit is up, more info: F1. Press 'S' to search for a string I downloaded and tested the shareware version, it seems to work fine on my 11-year-old Inspiron under WinXP, I had a parallel Imation LS-120 drive connected (Model SD 120 PPD2), and this unregistered shareware version 5.30 read, wrote and formatted Ok a 1.44MB floppy in the LS-120 drive. The only files needed to run VGA-Copy are vgacopy.exe, vgacopy.bin, vgacopy.cfg and vgacopy.idf. The .voc files can be safely deleted/renamed to turn off the sound, I remember vaguely that this helped to resolve an issue. SlowDown v3.10Runtime error 200 at 1289:0091? This runtime error 200 seems to occur with some old programs, e.g. DiskDupe v4.07, when the CPU is too fast for the software. Download SlowDown v3.10 http://bretjohnson.us/ and try to run VGA-Copy 5.30 via SlowDown, with the following Cmd Line in the desktop shortcut to vgacopy.exe: D:\VGACOPY\SLOWDOWN.COM /MHz486=30 /Int70h VGACOPY.EXE I have slowdown.com in the same folder as vgacopy.exe, e.g. D:\VGACOPY\ You may have to experiment with the value of the /MHz486 parameter, it's trial and error and varies from computer to computer, also between operating systems. With this parameter the time used to read or write a floppy can be changed. Sometimes you have to click several times on the desktop shortcut until VGA-Copy comes up. The files vgacp50a.zip (older v5.0a) http://www-ftp.lip6.fr/pub/pc/garbo/pc/diskutil/vgacp50a.zip and vgacp.zip (v6.21) in my software archive contain English-language manuals (VGACOPY.DOC). There is apparently no English manual for v5.30 Miscellaneous notes about VGA-Copy v5.3: - click on the A: or B: button to select the drive. You may, for example, select drive A:, read in a floppy in drive A:, then select B: and write to a floppy in drive B: - there are 2 Format buttons, quite confusing: the left-most Format button makes a full format when set to ON, the Format button in the middle just selects the desired format type ( 1200KB, 1.44MB,etc) - to format a floppy you first have to select the format type with the format button in the middle, and then click on the Write button to actually do the formatting - error msg 0C: the controller doesn't accept the selected format - bad sectors are displayed as yellow bars in the info window, VGA-Copy does NOT mark them as bad (as DOS FORMAT does). - click on the Info button to check whether a write or format operation was done Ok - use chkdsk b: to clear the drive if things go wrong after inserting different odd-formatted floppies - use chkdsk b: /f to fix a freshly-formatted 3.5" 1200KB floppy; the 3.5" 1200KB floppy is then Ok .VCP image files of floppy disks: .VCP image files can be made from a floppy and written to a floppy via parameters in 2 additional desktop shortcuts: a) Desktop shortcut "Make VCP from floppy": Cmd Line to create image file: Properties -> Program tab D:\VGACOPY\SLOWDOWN.COM /MHz486=30 /Int70h VGACOPY.EXE D:\VGACOPY\IMAGE.VCP /!0R NOTE: in '!0R' 0 is floppy drive A; all characters after the ! are the underlined characters in the buttons of the VGA-Copy screen b ) Desktop shortcut "Write VCP to floppy": Cmd Line to write from an image file: Properties -> Program tab D:\VGACOPY\SLOWDOWN.COM /MHz486=30 /Int70h VGACOPY.EXE D:\VGACOPY\IMAGE.VCP /!0W Reading and writing image files is in the documentation file VGANLEIT.EXE (German), line 974, under "Transdisk-Funktion und Batch-Betrieb". Maybe the unusual term "Transdisk-Funktion" was used because there was no standard term in German yet for reading and writing floppy image files at the time, or maybe it came from the Amiga world, e.g. http://winuaehelp.back2roots.org/started/transdisk.htm , maybe VGA-Copy v5.3 can also create images of Amiga floppies http://eab.abime.net/archive/index.php/t-42332.html or http://www.bing.com/search?q=amiga+%22vga-copy%22&go=&qs=n&sk=&form=QBLH , no idea. WinImage v8.50 under WinXP can open and mount to a virtual drive .VCP image files created by VGA-Copy v5.3.

Hi jaclaz, I have test-installed Letter Assigner v1.2.0, but apparently it is not possible to assign under Win98SE the drive letter B: to the LS-120 drive K:, I got the err msg: "it is impossible to use letter B for any drive other then its current owner, because B: is one of several letters assigned to the single physical drive". Also, when I right-click in the Letter Assigner window on any of the drives displayed, I get the err msg "Letass32. The program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down." Win98 crashes shortly afterwards and I had to reboot + fix lost clusters. Any other suggestions? BTW, the drive letter issue is probably just the most visible layer of problems to get VGA-Copy v5.3 to work with an LS-120 drive under Win98. A. VGA-Copy v5.3 with the left-bay module (ATAPI/IDE LS-120 drive plus CD/DVD drive, both bootable) of my 11-year-old Dell Inspiron 7500 laptop The left-bay LS-120 module of my laptop, as perhaps also the LS-120 drives of other laptop makes, may function in a special way with the help of the laptop BIOS. 1) Under MS-DOS 7 - works fine: - the LS-120 drive is accessible under 2 drive letters (A: via the BIOS, J: via the Matsus***a driver), both with regular floppy disks and with 120MB LS-120 diskettes - VGA-Copy v5.3 works fine accessing the LS-120 under A: - on the 700MHz Inspiron I have used VGACopy v5.3 with the help of SlowDown v1.01 and v3.10, using the following comand lines: slowd310.com /mhz486=30 /Int70h vgacopy.exe [slowDown v3.10 was renamed to slowd310.com, could be a different name] slowdown.com /2980 vgacopy.exe [this is slowdown.com v1.01,] - both SlowDown versions work fine under MS-DOS 7 - finding working parameters for SlowDown is a matter of trial-and-error and varies with the hardware used. 2) Under Win98SE (DOS window) - doesn't work: - the LS-120 drive is accessible under only 1 drive letter A: - VGA-Copy v5.3 comes up in a full-screen DOS window and recognizes the LS-120 drive as A: with the same Cmd lines in the desktop shortcut:as under MS-DOS 7.1 - when trying to read a regular floppy, VGA-Copy freezes analysing track 0, the only way to exit is to pull the plug - when trying to write to/format a regular floppy, the full-screen VGHACopy window disappears/crashes and the following err msg is displayed under Win98: "SLOWDOWN - VGACOPY. This program has performed an illegal operation and will be terminated. If the program consistently encounters problems, click the Start button, then select Help, Troubleshooting, and 'if you are having trouble running MS-DOS programs' " 3) Under WinXP (Command prompt window) - doesn't work: - the LS-120 drive is accessible under only 1 drive letter A: - VGA-Copy v5.3 loads Ok with SlowDown v3.10, but not with SlowDown v1.01. When I tried to format a regular floppy, with Verify ON, all the diagnostic/status bars etc looked fine. After the formatting process was done, I clicked on the Info button to check the floppy, and surprise: "Disk in drive A:, Size: 0 bytes, Free: 0 bytes." The MS Properties sheet displayed the file system as RAW. So something went really wrong, no idea why. Running VGA-Copy with the left-bay LS-120 module under Win98 and WinXP does look like a can of worms. On the positive side, VGA-Copy v5.3 worked fine with the left-bay LS-120 drive under DOS 7. In subsequent postings I will describe in which hardware/software combinations VGA-Copy works Ok with LS-120 drives.

None that I know of. UPDATE: I got VGACopy v5.3 to work with LS-120 drives under WinXP. More information about VGACopy on LS-120 drives will be posted at starting with posting #77

Thanks dencorso. I have updated the index in posting #1. It's definitely worth while looking at the index in posting #1, the LS-120 topic is huge and it's easy to loose the overview over all the info and details spread out across various postings. VGA-Copy v5.3 works with an LS-120 drive under WinXP After quite a bit of fiddling around, VGA-Copy v5.3 works fine with ATAPI/IDE (=internal) and parallel LS-120 drives under WinXP. VGA-Copy v5.3, however, has issues with USB LS-120 drives under WinXP. The freeware VGA-Copy v6.25 http://www.moenk.de/pages/vgacopy.html and http://www.zdnet.de/download/30593/vga-copy.htm also recognizes LS-120 drives under WinXP, but when reading in a floppy with my 11-year old Inspiron 7500 laptop, or with my more modern dual core desktop, I eventually get the err msg: "Out of memory, aborted". Since my old v5.3 works fine now with LS-120 drives, I will not pursue v6.25 any further. Maybe others, who don't have v5.3, may attempt to get v6.25 going. VGA-Copy v5.3 is arguably the best floppy disk copying and formatting software. VGA-Copy can be set to read bad sectors up to 99 times and LS-120 drives have a much better error correction than regular floppy drives. The combo VGA-Copy v5.3 plus LS-120 drive is probably the best tool to recover damaged floppy disks. In subsequent postings I will explain how ancient VGA-Copy v5.3, of 1994, can be made to run fine with LS-120 drives under WinXP. I was not able to get VGA-Copy v5.3 to run with LS-120 drives under Win98, the initial hurdle being the drive letter assignment: VGA-Copy works with floppy drives A: and B:. WinXP assigns to an ATAPI/IDE or parallel LS-120 drive the drive letter B:, but Win98 assigns to LS-120 drives a drive letter following the HDDs, e.g. K:, L: etc.

How about moving the topic index page, which is currently posting #22, to the front, or putting a copy of #22 to the front?

@dencorso: Thanks for moving the postings from the garage sale topic to this topic. Could you position these postings, currently #1-21, before posting #69, so that the old posting #1 remains the first posting? Thanks again.

Hi jaclaz, I have checked out Format720. It does not run under Win98SE, you get the err msg: "Opening floppy drive A:... Error 2: The system cannot find the file specified" Format720 under WinXP Under WinXP Format720 formats Ok already-formatted as well as bulk-erased 720KB floppy disks, both in a regular floppy disk drive and in an LS-120 drive. When formatting bulk-erased 720KB floppies, a possibly misleading warning msg appears, which can be ignored: "format720.exe - Unknown Disk Format. The disk in drive A: is not formatted properly. Please check the disk, and reformat if necessary" After clicking on Continue, the floppy will be reformatted Ok. Format720 can format a 720KB diskette only in drive A:, not in a drive with another letter. Format720 therefore only works with an internal ATAPI/IDE LS-120 drive or a regular floppy drive which can format 720KB. Format720 does not work on external drives (USB, parallel or PCMCIA), unless there are some special tricks to change the drive letter to A: Searching for a program to low-level format LS-120/240 diskettes LS-120/240 diskettes can die quickly, mainly because of a bad track 0. About half of my LS-120 diskettes have died, and the production of LS-120 diskettes was stopped many years ago. Maybe a low-level formatting program could revive 50% of my dead or bad LS-120 diskettes. In 10 years from now, probably most of the LS-120 diskettes around will have died, and recovering LS-120 diskettes with bad track 0 will be essential. 2 years ago I bought a box with 10 LS-240 diskettes for $15, now they are hard to find and cost around $6+S&H at amazon, for a single diskette. At ebay.com there is currently just 1 single LS-240 diskette offered at $15+S&H. A 400-1000% increase in 2 years I have not yet come across a program which can low-level format bulk-erased LS-120 diskettes. I couldn't get Micro-Scope 2005 to format LS-120 diskettes. Format720, however, can low-level format regular 720KB floppy disks in an LS-120 drive. Maybe Format720 could be modified to low-level format LS-120 diskettes? Format720 was written in Borland C++. It is a small program and the open source (GNU) can be downloaded from http://www.denispetrov.com/format144/format720src.zip . How difficult would it be to modify the Format720 program to low-level format LS-120 (or LS-240) diskettes?

3.5" floppy disks formatted to 1.2MB under WinXP a) Formatting VGACopy, after some tinkering, CAN format, under WinXP SP2 on my old 700MHz laptop, 1.44MB floppy disks to 1.2MB format on a regular 720KB/1.44MB floppy drive. The 1.2MB format (80 tracks, 15 sectors/track) is the format of old 5.25" floppy 1.2MB disks. Formatting a 3.5" floppy to 1.2MB allows to work with a 5.25" look-alike in a 3.5" drive, under WinXP. b ) Reading and writing Once a 3.5" floppy disk is formatted to 1.2MB it can be read and written to Ok with other applications under WinXP, e.g. Beyond Compare. To avoid that WinXP crashes "chkdsk b:" (or a:, etc) should be entered right after inserting the odd-formatted floppy disk, to clear the drive. Unfortunately 3.5" floppy disks formatted to 1.2MB do not work in an LS-120/240 drive under WinXP, only in a regular regular floppy drive. Under WinXP Windows Explorer (except for its format facility) and Beyond Compare work fine with a 1.2MB formatted floppy disk in a regular floppy drive A: and a 360KB formatted floppy disk in an LS-120 drive B:, copying, deleting, comparing Ok from one drive to the other. Under WinXP

Old floppy disk formats (360KB, 160KB etc) under WinXP a) Formatting VGACopy, after some tinkering, CAN format, under WinXP SP2 on my old 700MHz laptop, 720KB floppy disks (or 1.44MB floppy disks with a taped left hole) to most old diskette formats on a regular 720KB/1.44MB floppy drive. Unfortunately VGACopy does not work with LS-120/240 drives, only with a regular floppy drive. I have not yet tried to get VGACopy to work under WinXP on my 2.2GHz dual-core desktop with a bfg 7800GS card. b ) Reading and writing Once a floppy disk is formatted to an old format (360KB, 160KB, etc) it can be read and written to Ok with other applications under WinXP, e.g. Beyond Compare. To avoid that WinXP crashes "chkdsk b:" (or a:, etc) should be entered right after inserting the odd-formatted floppy disk, to clear the drive. SuperDisk drives (LS-120/240) read and write floppies with these old formats much faster than regular floppy drives. Working under WinXP on these old floppy formats with an LS-120/240 drive seems to be more stable than with a regular floppy drive. Some regular floppy drives sometimes refuse to read odd-formatted floppy disks, for unknown reasons; LS-120/240 drives always work fine with odd-formatted floppy disks if you run chkdsk after inserting the floppy.. Under Win98 odd-formatted floppy disks have issues in a regular floppy drive, much less so under WinXP and in an LS-120/240 drive. WinXP seems to be preferable to Win98 when reading and writing odd-formatted floppies (except for 1.2MB formatted 3.5" floppies, see posting below). Win98 is preferable for formatting odd-formatted floppies, unless VGACopy can be used. BTW, the 360KB floppy disk format (40 tracks, 9 sectors/track) is the format of old 5.25" floppy 360KB disks. Formatting a 3.5" floppy to 360KB allows to work with a 5.25" look-alike in a 3.5" drive, under WinXP.

Hi jaclaz,Thanks for the correction. In my comment in the previous posting I just wanted to point out the default format info taken from the media byte. Thanks for the link. Can FORMAT720 do any tricks which the tools below can't?Tools to format 720KB floppies under WinXP 1) Matsus***a SuperDisk Format Utility - works only in a SuperDisk (LS-120 or LS-240) drive - you must NOT enter a Volume Label into the field "Volume Label" and must NOT select "View Result" - if you enter something into the field "Volume Label": at end of a full format, you get the err msg: "Error Message. Can not create a volume name. No disk is in the drive or the disk is protected, or the drive does not work well." - if you enter something into the field "Volume Label": at end of quick format, you get the err msg: "Error Message. Can not create a volume name" - if you do not enter a volume label, but select "View Result", you get the err msg: "Error Message. Can not get the disk information" 7/18/2011 - works fine with bulk-erased floppies 2) command window prompt: - "format b:" formats an already low-level formatted 720KB floppy; the 720KB format type is read from track 0 - "format b: /t:80 /n:9" formats a bulk-erased 720KB floppy 3) WinImage v8.5 under WinXP CAN full-format a 720KB floppy, in a regular 720KB/1.44MB floppy drive, in an LS-120/240 drive and in a BUSlink USB floppy drive, IF you set: -> Options -> Settings -> Disk tab -> de-select Verify writing if "Verify writing" is selected, however, you get a lot of err msgs like: "Error. Disk error on track 1, head 0. Floppies do not match" 4) VGACopy after some tinkering 5) Format720 (added to this list on 22-Jul-2011)

Using 720KB floppy disks under WinXP There seems to exist a belief that one cannot format 720KB floppy disks under Windows XP. Guy Hart-Davis, for example, in his book "Mastering Windows XP Home Edition" (2nd ed., Sybex, 2002) writes on p.352: "NOTE: XP can format only 1.44MB floppies. It can't format 720KB floppies - neither from tte Format dialog box nor from the command line FORMAT command - though it can read 720KB floppies formatted using other operating systems" On all my computers, however, under WinXP SP2 Professional, I can format, read and write to 720KB floppy disks. The above belief seems to be caused by the following: 1) The Windows XP Format program (i.e. WinXP Explorer via the dialog box) indeed cannot format a 720KB floppy disk. The Capacity field in the dialog box has only a single selection, 1.44MB, and when you try to format a 720KB floppy disk you get the err msg: "Formatting 3 1/2 Floppy (A:). Windows was unable to complete the format." 2) Curt Simmons, for example, in his book "Windows XP Secrets" (Hungry Minds, 2002) writes on p.71, in the table with the Format Command Parameters: "/f: size specifies the size of the floppy disk. The values are: 160, 180, 320, 360, 720, 1200, 1440, 2880, 20.8MB (magneto-optical disk). The physical disk must be able to handle the size you choose here." When I used the above syntax under WinXP SP2 and entered in the Command Prompt window "format a: /f:720" I got the msg "Invalid parameter - "/F:720 So, the Format command under WinXP can't format 720KB floppy disks? WRONG! The syntax to format a 720KB floppy disk under WinXP SP2 is just "format a:", without a parameter. With the command "format a:" you can format a 720KB floppy disk. The format command under WinXP SP2 apparently gets its format parameters from the Media Type on track 0 (not from the absence of a 2nd punched hole characterizing 720KB floppy disks). BTW, the Windows XP Format command canNOT format bulk-erased 720KB floppy disks, where track 0 was wiped out, you get the err msg: "The type of the file system is RAW. The new file system is FAT. Verifying 1.44M. Invalid media or Track 0 bad - unusable media." 3) Many floppy drives seem to be able to handle only 1.44MB floppies, not 720KB floppies. So there may have been some confusion as to what can't be done because of Windows XP, and what can't be done because of the hardware. External floppy drives which can read, write and format 720KB floppies are not that common. All LS-120/240 SuperDisk drives, however, are able to read, write and format 720KB and 1.44MB floppies. I have several external USB Buslink floppy drives model No. FDD1, which can read, write and format 720KB and 1.44MB floppies.

The Que! SuperDisk LS-240 USB drive Hi jaclaz, ls240.pdf in the above link is the 2-page product description/product flyer of the Que! SuperDisk LS-240 drive. My black Que! SuperDisk LS-240 drive is the Matsus***a model LKM-FK73-D, manufactured May 2001. "Manual.pdf" is the 17-page "instruction manual" of the LKM-FK73-D and can be extracted from 240_fd32e.exe http://web.archive.org/web/20030608221432/http://www.mke.panasonic.co.jp/data/mkehp/docs/driver/240_fd32e.exe The manual contains pictures of a black unit, without the Que! QPS insignia, and has the manual number LMQT00524, created on 26-Apr-2001. I have also come across a similar manual, with the only differences that it contains a white model, is marked "Imation", has the manual number LMQT00539 and was created on 18-May-2001. manual.pdf can be extracted from LS240.exe obtainable from http://members.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php?driverid=497476 This LS240.exe seems to be an older version of the SuperDisk Utility, with a timestamp of 17-Oct-1998. The last version of the SuperDisk Utility, listed in the Toolbox in posting #1, seems to be preferable.

Documentation of 32MB formatting There is some technical info in Spwt32.hlp [6356KB], especially in the chapter "Feature", in the install-to folder of Matsus***a SuperDisk Utility v2.03. "SuperWriter32 Manual.pdf" [320KB], also in the install-to, seems to be a much abbreviated English language version, written in a hard-to-understand English. A different installer file of the SuperDisk Utilities can be downloaded from http://web.archive.org/web/20030608221432/http://www.mke.panasonic.co.jp/data/mkehp/docs/driver/240_fd32e.exe . 240_fd32e.exe has a little earlier timestamp of 12-Nov-2001, as displayed by MiTeC EXE Explorer, in contrast to the version in the Toolbox in posting #1, which has a timestamp of 29-Nov-2001. 240_fd32e.exe contains the Japanese SuperWriter32 Manual.pdf [829KB], which can be extracted from 240_fd32e.exe\data1.cab with UniExtractor v1.6.1. The Japanese SuperWriter32 Manual.pdf [829KB] has about twice as many pages as the English version [320KB]. QUESTION: Is there any useful additional information contained in the Japanese SuperWriter32 manual?

32MB formatted floppy disks - CanNOT repair bad sectors When you click on "Move" in the NDD window (see screenshot above) , 2 windows pop up (see attached screenshot). It is not possible to repair damaged 32MB floppy disks with Norton Disk Doctor, because only SuperWriter32 can write to 32MB-formatted floppy disks.

32MB formatted floppy disks - Bad Sectors (2) Bad sectors in the data area cause data loss. Attached is a screenshot of a 32MB formatted floppy disk with bad sectors in the data area. The bad sectors were created by adding files to a previously "burnt" 32MB floppy disk, using the setting "File At Once (FAO)", which should not be used. I still have to test whether 32MB-formatted floppies auto-decay and develop bad sectors rapidly. 32MB floppy disks are very dense media, and I would be surprised if they don't auto-decay as fast as Blu-ray disks.

32MB formatted floppy disks - Bad Sectors (1) When SuperWriter32 formats a 32MB floppy disk, bad sectors are created in the free space (see the screenshot below, NDD msg: "The cluster is not used"). A binary compare with Beyond Compare of the original source and the files on the 32MB floppy is Ok however, since the bad sectors are not in the used data area. So these are apparently innocuous bad sectors. BUT: If you have inserted a good 32MB floppy and: 1) selected in SuperWriter32 -> Settings -> Write Mode -> File At Once (FAO) 2) then add or delete files in the SuperWriter32 target window 3) then select -> File -> Write the 32MB floppy disk will become corrupted somehow and Beyond Compare will indicate errors and eventually you will have to reboot. Maybe things go wrong when SuperWriter writes new files over bad sectors in the previously unused area. It looks like FD32MB incremental writing was the last feature added to SuperWriter32 v2.03, and is an unfinished work-in-progress which never got fixed, typical for last builds/last versions. Never use the File At Once (FAO) write mode, only use the Disk At Once (DAO) mode. Bad sectors in the not-used data area can be ignored if the Disk At Once (DAO) write mode is used. A freshly FD32MB-formatted, blank floppy disk causes NDD to display in the surface test always the err msg "Cluster 5 contains a bad sector (number 112)", but "burning" a compilation to this 32MB-formatted floppy disk creates a good floppy, which again has a bad sector in the not used data area. BTW, the surface scan of the 32MB-formatted floppy disk in the LS-240 drive is fast (1:24 minutes for 31.9MB), as shown in the attached screenshot.

"Burning" a 32MB floppy disk A regular 1.44MB floppy disk can be formatted and written to only with the SuperWriter32 software, which is part of the Matsus***a SuperDisk Utiliy. 32MB formatted floppies canNOT be written to by any other software, e.g. Windows Explorer, Beyond Compare, Norton Disk Doctor or ScanDisk. Only SuperWriter32 can write to a 32MB floppy; all other programs have only read access to a 32MB-formatted floppy. A 32MB floppy disk can be compared to a CD-RW disk, but without packet writing software. SuperWriter32 can "re-burn" a 32MB floppy disk with a new compilation.. SuperWiter32 is similar to a CD burning program: The upper part of the SuperWriter32 window is the source, the lower part is the target (see attached screenshot). Files and folders can be added to the target only by drag-and-drop from the source window of SuperWriter32, not by drag-and-drop from an open Windows Explorer window. The compilation is "burnt" to the 1.44MB floppy disk by selecting -> File -> Write.

Good to hear this. I had created the 2 images with the GRDuw option AbsRW (other options are BIOS and IoCtrl) in the left-bay zip drive module of my old 7500 Inspiron laptop. This left-bay zip drive module fits into the 7500, but was actually made for the older Inspiron 7000. It has a big sticker by Dell on it: "For Inspiron 7000 ONLY" and has produced surprising results in the past, possibly because of some incompatibility in the BIOS. OT: Here another example of a BIOS incompatibility (or just a bad LS-240 drive?): About 2 years ago I tried to build an LS-240 left-bay module, which Dell never offered for the Inspiron 7500, they have only LS-120 modules. I had replaced the LS-120 drive in the Dell left-bay LS-120 module with an LS-240 drive taken from an IBM Thinkpad LS-240 Ultrabay 2000 drive module. The LS-240 drive from the IBM module was detected by the Dell Inspiron, could read from an LS-120 diskette, but not from an LS-240 diskette, and when trying to format a 1.44 floppy disk to 32MB, SuperWriter32 broke off after 7% OT: Left-bay modules in the Inspiron 7500 are usually bootable (except for the left-bay HDD module containing a 2nd or 3rd HDD), while right-bay modules are not. Dell never made a left-bay zip drive module for the Inspiron 7500, only a non-bootable right-bay zip drive module. When I have both zip drive modules inserted into my old Inspiron 7500 (i.e. into the right and left bays), I can use them at the same time, very convenient for comparing/copying etc. of 2 zip disks. I can also have both the bootable LS-120/DVD combo module and the right-bay zip drive module inserted. It is much more convenient to change laptop drive modules than to disconnect/reconnect IDE devices inside a desktop.

GRDuw cannot read the modified .ima file either and produces the same err msg about the media type.I have just: 1) made a long format of a 100MB zip with Iomega Tools, selecting "Make disk bootable" 2) created with GRDuw an image of bootable zip disk 3) inserted another zip disk into the zip module 4) reloaded the .ima image file into GRDuw 5) wrote the .ima image file with GRDuw onto that 2nd zip disk Surprise: At the end of verification the following warning msg is displayed: "GRDuw - Message. The disk into the drive does not match with that in the memory image !" I repeated 3) to 5) once more, same err msg. So apparently GRDuw cannot clone a zip disk, in contrast to LS-120 disks. Out of curiosity, I created an image (2) of the cloned zip disk, and made a compare in Beyond Compare/Hex Viewer. 2 bytes in track 0 were different from the 1st image. I have attached a screenshot.

@jaclaz and dencorso: Would an image file, created by GRDuw v4.1.17, of a freshly full-formatted bootable (i.e. with system files) but otherwise blank 100MB zip disk be of any help?Nearly 2 years ago, when I intended to archive my old zip and jaz disks, I came across some old zip and jaz disks, containing files and folders created with some special Win3.x's and Win95 under various unofficial Farsi code pages, also under standard Arabic code pages. But I never got around to testing the created images, and I just left this project unfinished in the box. In any case I was able to create an image file of a 1GB jaz disk with GRDuw and then restore this image with WinImage v8.1.8100, GRDuw couldn't restore the jaz image, only create it.

Any reason for the 32K sized clusters? It should be 2K: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/140365/en-us and it really should be FAT16. Or am I missing something? When I tried to load dencorso's .ima file into GRDuw v4.1.17, I got the err msg: "GRDuw - Fatal error. The Disk Image file media type is NOT supported !". This err msg may or may not mean something because one of the main issues of GRDuw is that it checks the media type before proceding. Once GRDuw passes the media type hurdle, it provides detailed info about a disk (zip, LS-120, regular floppies, Jaz) or disk image, for example the attached report in http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/151957-ls-120-superdisk-drive-under-win98-and-dos/page__view__findpost__p__970657

32MB floppy in a regular floppy drive I have attached the disk information report generated by Norton Disk Doctor 2004 when it checks, under Win98SE and in a regular floppy drive, a 1.44MB floppy disk formatted to 32MB. NDD displays 2 error messages during checking: 1) Error on drive A: - Error reading a sector in the FAT. The File Allocation Table (FAT) has a physical error. 2) The following entries have invalid cluster chains: \fd32mb.sys. The disk's usage table for these entries has been destroyed. The same error messages are displayed when checking the FD32MB floppy in an LS-120 drive. ndd_win98_fd32mb_in_regular_floppy_drive.txt

Hi dencorso, I first formatted with SuperWriter32 -> Tool -> FD32MB Format a 1.44MB floppy disk to 32MB. I gave it the volume label "MSFN_ORG". I then ran SuperWriter32 -> Tool -> DiskCopy, with the freshly-formatted 32MB floppy in the LS-240 drive. When SuperWriter32 prompted to insert the target diskette, I made a copy of the temporary file Fd-32Img.dat, then cancelled the DiskCopy. (see also my posting #24 http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/151957-ls-120-superdisk-drive-under-win98-and-dos/page__view__findpost__p__970671 ) I have attached a rared up copy of this temporary image file created by SuperWriter32. HTH. Blank_Fd-32Img.rar

Interesting link about Que! D2 Dual Drives in an announcement on 17-Apr-2001. I would speculate that they were never actually sold. In a capture by the wayback machine on 7-Aug-2001 these drives were still "Coming Soon! Que! D2 Dual Drives" http://web.archive.org/web/20010807111533/http://www.qps-inc.com/cgi-bin/display?sn=352263588164159&tm=prod_ext_fire My USB LS-240 drive has a manufacturing date of May 2001. Do you know at what date exactly the plug was pulled on the SuperDisk drives?