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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Formatting of unmountable floppy disk

tigrr - Mar 3, 2008 - 9:15 am

Is there a way to *force* formatting of floppy disks in MacOS?

The problem:
The problem is that some floppy disks won't mount on the Mac desktop when inserted in the floppy disk drive, hence the system doesn't recognize them and I won't be able to format either.

Why does this happen in the first place?
I use floppy disks to transfer files between my Atari ST and my Mac Powerbook. The Atari ST uses an *almost* MS-DOS disk format by default (I can format it fully MS-DOS compatible with certain Atari software though), so if I format it that way the Mac won't recognize the disk at all.
It won't mount it on the desktop, and even if I try to do an "Erase" of the floppy disk drive (the media itself won't be shown) in Disk Utility I get an error message saying it can't be formatted.

The temporary solution:
If I format the floppy disk in the Atari ST again however, but this time use a 100% MS-DOS compatible formatter the disk is magically readable on the Mac again as well.

But.... is there a way I can force-format an unreadable floppy disk on the Mac itself?

MACBOY29 - Mar 4, 2008 - 1:09 pm

do you have any other version of mac os prior to os 10 if so let me know and i will guide you through the process. i will look into with apple if there is a way to format forcefully although you might need to start up in single user mode in os 10 and type a command but i will look into it and get back to a.s.a.p.

macboy29

tigrr - Mar 4, 2008 - 1:28 pm

I sold all my old MacOS with MacOS 7 and 8, but I have installed "Classic" in my Powerbook G4. I believe that's MacOS 9.2.

Isn't there a UNIX command I could use for this?

MACBOY29 - Mar 4, 2008 - 2:17 pm

so go to system prefs startupdisk and chose os 9.2 instead of the tiger partion try that and let me know what happens there is a unix command for this but i am not savy on unix so bare with me using the graphical interface i can look into it and see but lets stick to the graphic shell cause one wrong move in unix shell and your system is toast meaning you will need to install from scratch not cool

tigrr - Mar 4, 2008 - 2:24 pm

That' not possible. In the "Startup disk" section of System Preferences I can only choose between:

- MacOSX 10.4.10 on Mac HD
- Network Startup

There is no separate partition for MacOS Classic (9.2). I installed Classic from the MacOS system DVD and was never prompted to first create a separate partition. Your setup seems to be very different from mine.

MACBOY29 - Mar 4, 2008 - 2:47 pm

so you are os 10 native no os 9 then os 10. just in the begining of os 10 you could dual boot osx and system 9 o.k i am gussing this is a usb floppy drive does os x have the proper file to use with the drive what is the make of your floppy cause the g4 i know does not come with a floppy drive and get back to me

tigrr - Mar 5, 2008 - 1:44 am

I'm using a pretty standard external USB floppy disk drive. It's a Mitsumi (Imation branded) FA401. Works perfectly with standard floppy disks, but like I said refuses to mount non-readable disks, thus can't reformat them.

I can't understand this as being anything but a MacOS issue rather than a hardware issue, or else I would most likely have problems with all my floppy disks. After reformatting the unmountable disks on another computer (my Atari ST or a PC) it works fine. It's that stupid mounting procedure on the Mac that does it, which PCs or Atari STs don't have. They simply don't do anything with the floppy disk until you tell the computer to format it.

So I can only imagine that the solution is some sort of UNIX command to format the floppy. After having tried to mount it for a while, MacOS gives up, but doesn't tell me to eject the disk, so a UNIX formatting command of some sort is probably worth looking into, but I don't know that command or the syntax of it.

MACBOY29 - Mar 5, 2008 - 8:54 am

i did some poking arround and found this link in apples support page i hope this helps let me know what happens.

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macos...ferprodos.html

macboy29

tigrr - Mar 5, 2008 - 9:32 am

That looks like something completely different. From what I can see it's an application for transferring software from the Apple II over to the Mac.
(I've downloaded and tried it out).

Isn't there a "format" type command in UNIX?

MACBOY29 - Mar 5, 2008 - 10:09 am

download rhe powerpoint presentation and see if you can create a disk immage of that disk issue still looking for the awnser to format in unix shell but untill i find it try this at least you can read and format the disks

http://adtpro.sourceforge.net/

macboy29

MACBOY29 - Mar 5, 2008 - 10:18 am

try this out please let me know what happens

http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/mansec?1M+format

macboy29

MACBOY29 - Mar 6, 2008 - 10:54 am

did this work ? and can i close this issue request.