[dba-Tech] Formatting diskettes

Hi Steve

Just tried again ..
The first failed, the second succeeded.
When I tried the first again it now succeeded.
Antivirus stayed on (eTrust).

I just think WinXP is picky.

We have a common rule here: If someone needs something delivered on
diskette, always supply two copies. This is indeed true as we have found
no pattern in why diskettes fail; they can be brand new, preformatted,
reformatted, custom formatted, old and used once, old and used many
times, no name, brand name - you just don't know. Further, nowadays
people don't use diskettes much so you can't even be sure the user's
drive works. That's another reason for supplying two copies. It is not
likely that both copies will fail due to low quality; if they do it is
more likely to be an issue during transportation or at the receiver's
end.

/gustav

>>> erbachs at gmail.com 05/09 12:04 am >>>
Gustav, Jon, Lembit, Bob,

For what it's worth, I have a clue. I noticed the trouble with
formatting a 3 1/2" diskette on a friend's system that I'm cleaning of
spyware and such. When I couldn't format a diskette on that system I
tried my main workstation as well as two others in my home office.
When they ALL came up with the same message -- no matter which
diskette I inserted -- I thought I'd look further.

I put in my Gibson Research SpinRite 6 CD and ran SpinRite on my main
workstation. One of its options is to create a boot diskette. I made
sure that I could read the directory on drive A: (it had four files on
it)...then I ran SpinRite. I clicked the option for creating the boot
disk. After a moment this message appeared:

Unable to acquire exclusive access to Drive A:. In order to format and
create a SpinRite 6 diskette drive A:, no other program can be
simultaneously viewing the contents of this drive. Please select
another drive for Windows Explorer or any command prompt window to be
viewing, and close any open files on this drive. Then click the
"Format and Write Diskette" below to retry the diskette creation."

Is this the problem? That something on all these Windows XP machines
is looking at drive A: in some way -- even if Windows Explorer shows
the folder of another drive?

Steve Erbach

On 5/8/05, Bob Geldart <bgeldart at verizon.net> wrote:
> Steve,
> 
> I'm still doing it on my PC (XP Home, SP-2).
> 
> I still have so many 3½ diskettes, and so seldom a great need, if one
gives
> me a problem I toss it.
> 
> Bob