[dba-Tech] Formatting diskettes

Tina, Gustav, Erwin, John,

I opened up DOS windows on three of my office machines. Three
different diskettes. I tried DIR A: on each one and got the same
message:

The floppy disk controller reported an error that is not recognized by
the floppy disk driver

I then went ahead on my main w/s with FORMAT A:. After the normal
prompt to insert a new disk in A:, I got this:


The type of the file system is RAW.
The new file system is FAT.
Verifying 1.44M
Format cannot run because the volume is in use by another process.
Format may run if this volume is dismounted first. ALL OPENED HANDLES
TO THIS VOLUME WOULD THEN BE INVALID. Would you like to force a
dismount on this volume? (Y/N)


I have NEVER seen this message before. I typed in Y and pressed Enter
and saw this:


Cannot lock the drive. The volume is still in use.


I got this series of two messages on all three of my workstations.
Sheesh! Does this provide any additional clues?

On 5/9/05, Tina Norris Fields <tinanfields at torchlake.com> wrote:
> All, It sure sounds to me like a diskette pulled out of a drive while there was an open file.  We used to be able to do that is DOS with impunity, but Windows really gets upset about it.  Have you tried formatting the disk from DOS?  If that doesn't work, I would toss the disk. 

Tina


On 5/9/05, Gustav Brock <Gustav at cactus.dk> wrote:

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

On 5/9/05 Erwin Craps <Erwin.Craps at ithelps.be> wrote:

Had this last week

Don't know if it was the diskette, dust in the drive or something else.
If you don't use the drive often there will be dust in the drive and
that could scratch the first disk in the drive.

Use another diskette and format the old fashion way.
Goto a command prompt and type format a:

That worked for me last week.

Erwin


On 5/8/05 John Bartow wrote:

Steve,
I've had problems writing/formatting floppies but I only have older disks so
I put it down to that. Maybe there's more to it? I just scrapped a box of
old disks!

John B.