Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc
Date: 1995/12/18

>: It's nice to be able to use a diskette with a bad block.
>: If you get a dozen, throw the disk out.
>I have a growing collection of 3.5" HD diskettes that won't format
>because they have track 0 errors.
>This may be a problem with my floppy disk drive, but I have a suspicion
>that it's something to do with Linux's formatting tools (mformat,
>fdformat or superformat).
>Does anyone else have similar problems?

I have this problem from time to time in DOS as well. I don't know what causes it, but waving a really strong magnet over the disk a few times (to erase it) it sometimes fixes the problem (Honest! I have done this in the past using big donut shaped magnets taken from old DEC hard disk packs). A bulk eraser would probably work even better. Also, try formatting the bad disk on a different computer, as some floppy drives seem to deal with this problem better than others. Once you get the disk to format successfully, you should be able to reformat it on your own machine without any problem.

Paul Secinaro

>>Does anyone else have similar problems?
>I have this problem from time to time in DOS as well.  I don't know