Re: Floppy diskettes - a few questions

On 2004-11-15 Michael Edwards wrote:
> I'm investigating a few Windows floppies. The floppies were reported
> as having gotten too close to a magnet.
>
> This does not appear to be the case, but I'm trying to work out a few
> things.
>
> Firstly, one of the floppies has no Volume Boot Record, or FATs. It
> just showed up as unallocated drive space, but files were recoverable
> in this space. What I'm trying do determine, is how it could end up in
> this condition?

Maybe somehow the first sectors got overwritten.

> reformats, deletions, etc. all end up with at least FATs on the disk.

Of course. These operations need the FAT to work at all.

[...]
> Secondly, any suggestions for good info on formatting? I recall
> reading on this list that formatting doesn't write to the data area,
> at least for HDDs. Certainly my test showed, as I expected, a quick
> format of a floppy leaves the data intact. A standard format (in XP)
> did seem to wipe the data area, however - all f6 or 00 in hex.

IIRC floppies are erased when being formated. However, harddisks are
not, and you should never rely on formating when you need to erase data.

Regards
Ansgar Wiechers
-- 
"Those who would give up liberty for a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety, and will lose both."
--Benjamin Franklin

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