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1994-11-06
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HCFORMAT V1.3 (c) 1992,1993 IMSL Software
INTRODUCTION
------------
The HCFORMAT utility formats floppy disks with capacities ranging from
20% to 128% higher than the standard DOS FORMAT. These high-capacity
floppy disk formats can be used on any PC with high-density 3.5" or
5.25" drives. The highest capacity formats provided are:
1.804 Mbyte format on 3.5" HD disks, instead of the normal 1.44 Mb
(22 sectors per track, 82 tracks)
1.476 Mbyte format on 5.25" HD disks, instead of the normal 1.2 Mb
(18 sectors per track, 82 tracks)
984 Kbyte format on 3.5" DD disks, instead of the normal 720 Kb
(12 sectors per track, 82 tracks)
820 Kbyte format on 5.25" DD disks, instead of the normal 360 Kb
(10 sectors per track, 82 tracks)
Other formats provided are:
1.44 Mbyte format on 5.25" HD disks, compatible with the 1.44 Mb
format of 3.5" HD disks (18 sectors per track, 80 tracks)
720 Kbyte format on 5.25" DD disks, compatible with the 720 Kb
format of 3.5" DD disks (9 sectors per track, 80 tracks)
1.76 Mbyte format on 3.5" HD disks, limited to 80 tracks for universal
drive compatibility (22 sectors per track, 80 tracks)
960 Kbyte format on 3.5" DD disks, limited to 80 tracks for universal
drive compatibility (12 sectors per track, 80 tracks)
820 Kbyte format on 3.5" DD disks, limited to standard density for
better media compatibility (10 sectors per track, 82 tracks)
800 Kbyte format on either 5.25" or 3.5" DD disks, for a little
additional capacity over the 720 Kb format without exceeding track
or density specifications (10 sectors per track, 80 tracks)
These higher capacities are obtained primarily by making better use of
the unformatted disk capacity than DOS FORMAT does, in ways which are
safe and fully supported by the drives and the diskette BIOS. However,
the highest-capacity formats make use of techniques which slightly
exceed the drive or media specifications. These techniques (identified
below) are usually safe, and are used by default, but can be turned off
if desired. HCFORMAT has been thoroughly tested through several
generations of DOS, with many different PCs and floppy drives, and
works reliably on all known systems.
These formats do not use any data compression - you can use Doublespace,
Stacker, or PKZIP on top of these capacities. The ability of Stacker to
create self-mounting floppy disks can be used, along with the similar
ability of HCFORMAT, to create floppy disks of up to 3.6 Mb capacity
which can be used on any system.
The HC TSR driver must be installed by HCFORMAT to read or write most of
the high-capacity disk formats (see the TSR command below).
PACKAGE CONTENTS
----------------
HCFLOPPY.DOC - this file
HCFORMAT.EXE - main utility
COPYANY.EXE - disk copy utility
FORMATTING WITH HCFORMAT
------------------------
The high-capacity disk formats are created by the utility HCFORMAT. The
syntax is very similar to the standard DOS FORMAT commmand:
HCFORMAT d: [/F:xxxx] | [/L] [/3] [/T:tt] [/[+|-]M] [/Q]
where:
d: is the drive containing the disk to format (A: or B:)
/F:xxxx optionally specifies the format capacity, where xxxx is:
1.804 (or 1804) for 1.804 Mb format on a 3.5" HD disk
1.76 (or 1760) for 1.76 Mb format on a 3.5" HD disk
1.476 (or 1476) for 1.476 Mb format on a 5.25" HD disk
1.44 (or 1440) for 1.44 Mb format on a 5.25" HD disk
984 for 984 Kb format on a 3.5" DD disk
960 for 960 Kb format on a 3.5" DD disk
820 for 820 Kb format on a 3.5" or 5.25" DD disk
800 for 800 Kb format on a 3.5" or 5.25" DD disk
720 for 720 Kb format on a 5.25" DD disk
The default format is the highest capacity supported by the
drive type (1.804 Mb for 3.5" or 1.476 Mb for 5.25")
/L specifies that a low-density (DD) disk is to be formatted,
changing the default formats to 984 Kb for 3.5" or 820 Kb for
5.25"
/3 specifies that a 5.25" disk is to be formatted for 3.5"
compatibility (1.44 Mb for a high-density disk, 720 Kb for a
low-density disk)
/T:tt specifies the number of tracks to be formatted (minimum
80). HCFORMAT uses 82 by default. The DOS standard is 80.
/Q specifies a quick re-format of a previously-formatted disk,
re-initializing only the DOS FAT and root directory to erase
the disk
/M formats the disk as self-mountable (defined below)
/+M makes an existing high-capacity disk self-mountable
/-M removes self-mountable format, reversing the effect of /+M
Use either /F:xxxx or a combination of the /L /3 /T switches to
specify the format. The /F:xxxx switch always overrides the /L /3 /T
switches if specified. /3 always formats 80 tracks, overriding /T if
specified.
The switches /Q, /+M, and /-M can only be used on previously-formatted
disks, and each should be the only switch on the command line if
specified. The switches /F:xxxx, /L, /3, /T, and /M can only be used
when formatting new disks or unconditionally re-formatting disks, and
can be combined in any order subject to the override rules above.
Drive letters and switches are not case-sensitive.
Example:
>HCFORMAT A: /F:1.44
HCFORMAT V1.2 (c) 1992,1993 IMSL Software
Formatting A: as 1440 Kb
Insert disk to be formatted and press Enter to proceed ...
Cyl c Hd h (counts while formatting)
Done
>
HCFORMAT low-level formats the disk, verifying as it formats. If an
error is detected, HCFORMAT will report it and continue. HCFORMAT does
NOT mark faulty sectors as Bad in the FAT like DOS FORMAT - it is
recommended that faulty disks not be used, or else they should be
thoroughly tested and marked with a separate disk test utility like
Norton Disk Doctor or PC Tools which can do a proper job of it.
When low-level formatting is complete, HCFORMAT initializes the boot
sector, FAT, and root directory for DOS.
If /Q (Quick format) is specified, the disk is assumed to be already
formatted, and the low-level format step is skipped. The existing
format type is read from the disk, and only the DOS FAT and root
directory initialization is performed. HCFORMAT /Q will Quick Format
any floppy disk with valid boot sector parameters, including standard
DOS disks and self-mountable high-capacity disks. However, the HC TSR
driver must be installed to Quick Format HC disks with capacities of
1.44 Mb or higher.
Self-mountable disk format is described in a separate section below.
HCFORMAT will create only the specified high-capacity formats - DOS
FORMAT should be used for all other standard disk formats. HCFORMAT
will not disallow any combination of formats and drive types - it will
only display a warning message (for example, HCFORMAT will write the
5.25" 1.44 Mb format on a 3.5" disk after displaying a warning, but this
is NOT the same 1.44 Mb low-level format as normally used on a 3.5"
disk).
The default formats use 82 tracks, which is the practical maximum on
most disks and drives. The /T:tt switch can be used to specify any
number of tracks from the DOS standard of 80 up to whatever maximum you
want to try on a particular disk and drive. This can produce format
capacities slightly different from the specific formats quoted here
(e.g. 830 instead of 820), but the actual capacity is always
correctly displayed by HCFORMAT and correctly handled by DOS.
However, the /F switch accepts only the specific 80-track and 82-track
format capacities listed here.
HCFORMAT supplies a variable DOS V4.0+ volume serial number, but not a
volume label (use the DOS LABEL utility afterward if you want a volume
label). HCFORMAT does not support installing bootable system files on
the floppy disk (you can do this with the DOS SYS command, but only the
800/820 Kb 3.5" and, on some systems, the 960/984 Kb non-self-mountable
format are bootable).
HCFORMAT does not save Unformat information, but if you run a separate
FAT preservation utility such as DOS V5.0 MIRROR, PC Tools MIRROR, or
Norton IMAGE on the floppy disk before doing a Quick format, it is
possible to recover the contents by running the corresponding UNFORMAT
utility immediately afterward. You can create a "SafeFormat" batch file
or command line macro to always perform MIRROR before HCFORMAT /Q if you
prefer.
As with standard DOS formats, you should never attempt to use a format
requiring high-density (HD) media with double-density (DD) media.
HCFORMAT always displays a reminder message to this effect when
high-density media is required. Attempting to format double-density
media as high density will probably result in a large number of read
errors or verification errors while formatting. You should specify the
/L switch with DD media.
HCFORMAT supports only physical floppy drives 0 and 1 (A: and B:).
TECHNICAL INFORMATION ON DISK FORMATS
-------------------------------------
HCFORMAT uses the following physical format techniques in various
combinations:
- smaller gaps between sectors to fit more sectors on a track
- 80 tracks (single-step) instead of 40 on 5.25" DD disks
- 1024-byte sector size (instead of 512) to reduce the amount of sector
overhead (gaps, headers, and trailers) on the track
- 20% higher recording density on 3.5" DD disks by using the higher data
rate intended for 5.25" DD disks
- 82 tracks instead of 80, allowed by almost all drives and disks
- multi-pass formatting to place two different physical formats on the
same track to support self-mounting
HCFORMAT also makes us of the following DOS format variations:
- single-sector clusters instead of double-sector clusters on DD disks
to waste less space per file
- smaller root directory on 800/820 Kb disks, mainly to allow
self-mounting
- "virtual" FAT2 on self-mounting 1.44-1.804 Mb disks
DOS is able to accept almost any disk format which fits its basic model
of a fixed track/head/sector organization and 512-byte data sector size.
This includes the HC formats, with the condition that 1024-byte sectors
must be translated to equivalent 512-byte sectors for DOS. However, DOS
always leaves it up to the diskette BIOS to handle setting the
appropriate drive hardware parameters. While any standard PC BIOS is
able to handle all the allowable variations in drive parameters if told
what to do, the BIOS normally makes certain assumptions based on
long-established DOS disk formats. These assumptions must be explicitly
overridden if you want to do something different. This is the case with
the HC formats which require non-standard combinations of data rate,
track stepping, and sector size.
The 1.76+ Mbyte formats on 3.5" HD disks, and the 1.44+ Mbyte formats on
5.25" HD disks, use a 1024-byte sector size instead of the standard DOS
512-byte sector size. Attempting to read a disk in one of these formats
without the HC TSR driver installed will normally result in a "Sector
not found" error. When the HC TSR driver is installed, the disk will
appear to DOS to have normal 512-byte sectors, with twice the actual
number of sectors per track.
The 720 Kbyte format on 5.25" DD disks uses 80 tracks instead of 40, and
is identical to the 3.5" DD 720 Kb format (and to the old quad-density
5.25" disk format skipped over by IBM). Attempting to read a disk in
this format without the HC TSR driver installed will appear to succeed
initially, but will usually result in a "Sector not found" error when
files beyond the first cylinder are accessed. When the HC TSR driver is
installed, the drive is set to the correct 80-track mode on the initial
access.
The 800 Kbyte format on either 3.5" or 5.25" DD disks uses 10 sectors
per track instead of 9. DOS correctly handles this difference, and no
additional steps are required. The 5.25" 800 Kb disks still need the
HC TSR driver installed to set 80-track mode, but the 3.5" 800 Kb disks
can be read by DOS unaided, and do not require the driver.
The 960 Kbyte format on 3.5" DD disks uses 12 sectors per track instead
of 9. This format is written using the higher 300 Kpbs data rate
intended for 5.25" HD drives which rotate at 360 rpm, instead of the
normal 250 Kbps rate intended for 300 rpm 3.5" drives. Most BIOS
versions automatically recognize the data rate on the disk regardless of
physical disk type, but a few do not (see compatibility notes below).
Also, while some BIOS versions correctly assume that this is an 80-track
format, others incorrectly assume 40 tracks. If the BIOS recognizes the
300 Kbps data rate and assumes 80 tracks, the 960 Kb disk is directly
readable by DOS unaided. Otherwise, the HC TSR driver is required to
select 80-track mode and/or the correct data rate.
Note that the use of 300 Kpbs data rate instead of 250 Kbps for the 960
Kb format pushes the DD media to a 20% higher density than normal, but
it seems to be reliable (unlike trying to use the 500 Kbps HD data rate
on DD media, which seldom works and is never reliable).
The highest-capacity format for each media type (1.804 Mb, 1.476 Mb,
984 Mb and 820 Mb) uses 82 tracks instead of 80. Standard floppy drives
do not limit the heads to stop at the 80th track - the heads are free to
keep stepping until they hit the head stop (you will hear a clunking
sound if this happens). Since the head movement range is designed a
little larger than necessary in order to allow for drive variations, it
is usually possible to fit in at least 82 tracks instead of the standard
80. DOS and the diskette BIOS don't care how many tracks there, as long
as the number of tracks is specified correctly in the boot sector
parameters of the disk.
ADDITIONAL FUNCTIONS OF HCFORMAT
--------------------------------
HCFORMAT also has several other functions, invoked by the following
keyword commands:
HCFORMAT TSR
ON | OFF
STATUS
[/?]
where:
TSR loads the HC TSR driver
OFF turns the HC TSR driver off (disables translation)
ON turns the HC TSR driver back on (re-enables translation)
STATUS displays the HC TSR driver status and BIOS drive status
/? (or no parameter) displays command line syntax help
Keywords can be abbreviated to the minimum unique length, and are not
case-sensitive.
TSR:
The command HCFORMAT TSR installs the resident HC driver, which occupies
a little over 2 Kbytes of memory. This command should normally be
placed in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file to load the driver every time the system
boots.
If the HC TSR driver is already loaded, you will receive an error
message.
Once installed, the driver operates automatically with any of the high-
capacity formats, and is fully transparent to standard disk formats.
The HC TSR driver is compatible with all programs which access the
floppy drives through the BIOS, including Windows 3.1, SMARTDRV, and
Stacker. It is also compatible with most disk utilities, including
Norton Utilities and PC Tools, with a few sensible exceptions (see
Compatibility Notes below).
The HC TSR driver can be loaded HIGH, but note that while it occupies
only a little over 2 Kb when resident, HCFORMAT requires up to 20 Kb
to load initially (or you can load the driver with MOUNT.EXE instead of
HCFORMAT as described below, in which case it requires only about 3 Kb
to load initially).
If you receive the following non-fatal warning message when loading the
HC TSR driver:
Warning - Internal buffer moved up to 64K physical memory boundary
HC TSR should be loaded at a different address to save memory
it indicates that the driver's internal 1024-byte disk I/O buffer would
have crossed a 64K physical memory boundary at the address where it was
loaded, which is not allowed by the hardware DMA controller. The driver
has therefore moved its buffer up to start at the boundary, wasting a
few bytes of unusable memory. You can probably avoid this by simply
re-arranging the order in which TSRs are loaded. The operation of the
HC TSR driver will be unaffected in any case.
ON/OFF:
The HC TSR driver can be turned off (disabled) and back on (enabled)
with these commands. This is only necessary if you wanted to view or
access HC disks without the driver's translation, or if you suspect some
interference with another disk utiltity (both unlikely).
The HC TSR driver is On (enabled) when initially loaded. It cannot be
unloaded from memory unless you use a separate TSR unloading utility,
but it can be temporarily disabled by the OFF command. When the OFF
command is issued, a flag is set in the driver which causes it to pass
all disk I/O commands through without modification. Issuing the ON
command clears this flag and causes the driver to resume normal
processing. The On command also causes a drive reset and re-read
in order to insure that any disks currently in the drives are correctly
recognized.
If you turn off the HC TSR driver, or remove it from memory with a TSR
unloading utility, any 720+ Kb DD disks currently in the drives can
continue to be accessed normally until they are removed. However, any
attempt to access any 1.44+ Mb HC disks left in the drives will
result in a "Sector not found" error.
STATUS:
The command HCFORMAT STATUS displays the current status of the HC TSR
driver (Not installed/On/Off) and the driver version number. It also
shows the BIOS-reported disk type and status of each of the floppy
disks.
The disk types which may be reported are:
5.25" 360 Kb DD
5.25" 1.2 Mb HD
5.25" 720+ Kb HC 80-track
5.25" 1.44+ Mb HC 1024-byte sectors
3.5" 720+ Kb DD
3.5" 960+ Kb HC 300 Kbps
3.5" 1.44 Mb HD
3.5" 1.76+ Mb HC 1024-byte sectors
Disks with 1024-byte sectors which are in self-mountable format have
the word "Mounted" appended to their type.
Example:
>HCFORMAT STATUS
HC TSR V1.2 On
A: 5.25" 1.2 Mb HD
B: 3.5" 1.76+ Mb HC 1024-byte sectors Mounted
Drives which have not yet been accessed, or do not exist as physical
drives, or are not high-density floppy drives are shown as "n/a".
Drives from which the disk has been removed continue to show
their status as of the last disk access. The STATUS command does not
cause HCFORMAT to re-access the disk.
The STATUS command shows physical disk type reported by the BIOS and the
HC TSR driver, not the disk capacity reported by DOS. Neither the BIOS
nor the HC TSR driver distinguish between similar formats such as the
720 Kb, 800 Kb and 820 Kb formats, so these are simply shown as "720+
Kb". 3.5" disks in the 800/820 Kb format are not reported as HC type,
since they do not require any translation by the HC TSR driver.
SELF-MOUNTABLE FORMAT
---------------------
A high-capacity disk normally cannot be read by DOS on a system without
the HC TSR driver installed (with the exception of the 3.5" 800/820 Kb
format, and sometimes the 960/984 Kb format, depending on the BIOS).
This is obviously a problem if you ever need to read your disks on
another system which may not have the driver installed. The solution is
to place a loadable copy of the driver on the high-capacity disk itself,
and install it on the destination system directly from the high-capacity
disk in a "self-mounting" process.
The /M switch causes HCFORMAT to place a loadable copy of the HC TSR
driver called MOUNT.EXE on the disk when it is formatted. Running
MOUNT.EXE from the floppy disk installs a copy of the HC TSR driver
which is identical to that installed by the HCFORMAT TSR command. A
disk with MOUNT.EXE on it in a loadable format is called Self-Mountable.
In the case of 720-820 Kb 5.25" HC disks, or 960/984 Kb 3.5" HC disks,
no special disk formatting required to make them self-mountable - the
file MOUNT.EXE is simply copied to the disk as the first file, and the
disk can be mounted by running MOUNT.EXE from the floppy disk.
MOUNT.EXE must be the first physical file on the disk and must be small
enough to fit entirely on cylinder 0. MOUNT.EXE lacks the formatting
and command functions of HCFORMAT, and is therefore much smaller.
MOUNT.EXE is marked as a hidden/read-only file on the disk, and
therefore does not appear in a standard directory listing.
The /+M switch can be used to make an existing 720-984 Kb disk self-
mountable by placing MOUNT.EXE at the beginning of the disk, even if
existing files already occupy that space. Any existing files occupying
the beginning of the disk are safely moved to make room for MOUNT.EXE.
An appropriate error message will be displayed if a file named MOUNT.EXE
is already found on the disk, or if the disk is full and there is no
room for MOUNT.EXE (there must be 2 Kb of space free). If you have a
full 720-960 Kb disk which you want to make self-mountable, you must
reformat it as the next higher capacity to make room for MOUNT.EXE.
If you subsequently want to make the disk non-mountable, use the /-M
switch of HCFORMAT. Alternatively, you can simply remove the read-only
protection and un-hide MOUNT.EXE with the command:
ATTRIB -R -H A:MOUNT.EXE
and then delete the file MOUNT.EXE.
Remember, if you try to access files on a 720-820 KB 5.25" high-capacity
disk (or a 960 Kb 3.5" disk on some systems) without installing the HC
TSR driver, the operation will fail with a disk error at the first
attempt to read beyond cylinder 0. MOUNT.EXE is able to load
successfully because it is small enough to fit entirely on cylinder 0.
Self-mounting formats with 1024-byte sectors:
Things are a little more complicated with the 1.44-1.804 Mb high-density
HC formats. Since they use 1024-byte sectors, they cannot be read at
all by DOS without the HC TSR driver installed. Therefore, some special
formatting on the first track is required to make them self-mountable on
another system.
When used with high-capacity 1.44-1.804 Mb floppy disks, the /M
switch of HCFORMAT reformats track 0 of the disk to have two separate
areas in different formats. Part of the track is a standard DOS format
with 512-byte sectors, and MOUNT.EXE is placed in this readable area.
The other part of the track is a high-capacity format with 1024-byte
sectors, where the standard high-capacity boot sector and FAT are
placed. None of the disk capacity is lost by this formatting (however,
DOS must be tricked a little by the HC TSR driver to get away with this!).
When read by DOS without the HC TSR driver installed, the Mountable disk
will initially appear to be a DOS disk of very small capacity (8 sectors
total), labelled "HC DISK V1", with a single file called MOUNT.EXE
occupying the entire disk. The directory listing contains a message
with instructions to run MOUNT instead of file names:
Volume in drive A is HC Disk V1
Directory of A:\
1This is 0
2a high- 0
3capacty 0
4disk. 0
5Run 0
6MOUNT 0
7to 0
8access. 0
MOUNT EXE 2048 17-09-93
9 File(s) 0 bytes free
When you run MOUNT from the floppy disk, it installs the HC TSR driver.
The disk will then be automatically mounted and appear as a normal high-
capacity 1.44-1.804 Mb disk, with no trace of MOUNT on it. This process
is known as "mounting" the disk, and the disk is then reported as
"Mounted" by the STATUS command. If the HC TSR driver is already
installed, self-mountable disks are automatically mounted on the initial
access, and there is no need to run MOUNT. There is no indication that
such a disk is mounted unless you run HCFORMAT STATUS. You can use
these disks in exactly the same way as non-mountable HC disks.
Only the normal high-capacity disk will appear as long as the HC TSR
driver is operating, even if the disk is removed and reloaded later.
Any other self-mountable disks inserted will also be mounted
automatically. If you remove or turn off the HC TSR driver, the mounted
disk will again appear in its original form, showing MOUNT.EXE and the
directory instructions as the only contents. No changes are written to
the disk by mounting or unmounting it.
The /+M switch of HCFORMAT can be used to make an existing 1.44-1.804 Mb
HC disk self-mountable by reformatting track 0. Any existing disk
contents are preserved. The conversion can be reversed by the /-M
switch, restoring the normal non-mountable high-capacity format. Using
/+M on a high-capacity disk which is already in self-mountable format,
or /-M on a high-capacity disk which is not in self-mountable format,
has no effect.
FALLBACK PROCEDURES
-------------------
If you ever need to read a non-self-mountable 720-984 Kb HC disk on
a system without the HC TSR driver, and the driver is not available,
there is a simple way to temporarily mount these disks using the DOS
DEBUG utility or BASIC. You must change the BIOS media state byte at
memory location 40:90 hex (for drive A:) or 40:91 hex (for drive B:)
to select the correct drive mode (single-step/80-track and 300 Kbps
data rate). This fix will last as long as the disk stays in the drive.
With DEBUG:
> DEBUG
-e 40:90 57 (substitute 40:91 for drive B:)
-q (quit DEBUG)
With BASIC:
DEFSEG &H40
OUT &H90 &H57 (substitute 91 for drive B:)
You can write the three numbers "40:90 57" on the disk label if you want
to remember them.
Additional fallback for 960/984 Kb disks:
If you get a "General failure" error trying to read a self-mountable
960/984 Kb disk on a machine without the HC TSR driver, the problem is
that the BIOS is not automatically trying the 300 Kbps data rate. The
above DEBUG/BASIC fallback procedure will fix it, but there is also
another way to get DOS to load MOUNT from the disk: enter the machine's
Setup mode, change the floppy drive type from 3.5" 1.44 Mb to 5.25" 1.2
Mb, and re-boot. The BIOS will then assume that the drive is a 5.25"
1.2 Mb drive, and will automatically try the 300 Kbps data rate. Don't
forget to change the drive type back after loading MOUNT.
COPYANY
-------
The 1.44 Mbyte and 720 Kb formats on 5.25" disks appear to DOS to be
exactly the same as for 3.5" disks, and allow disk copying back and
forth. There is one problem: DOS DISKCOPY recognizes different
physical drive types and will refuse to copy from a 3.5" drive to a
5.25" drive (although the opposite direction works, and DISKCOMP will
work as long as the drives are specified in the correct order).
The COPYANY utility is provided to avoid this problem with DISKCOPY.
COPYANY will copy any floppy disk exactly to any other disk in a
compatible format without worrying about the drive type. Compatible
means that the number of tracks and the number of sectors per track of
the destination disk must be equal to (or greater than) the source disk.
Both source and destination disks must be pre-formatted, and the source
and destination drives must be different.
DOS DISKCOPY will handle copying in the same drive or between compatible
drives, even for high-capacity formats as long as the HC TSR driver is
installed.
In addition, COPYANY will automatically handle disks in high-capacity
format (1024-byte sector format or 80-track DD format) even without the
HC TSR driver installed. This provides a disk copy capability in the
event that the driver is not installed on the host system.
Syntax: >COPYANY B: A: (order is source: dest:)
COPYANY V1.0 (c) 1992 IMSL Software
Copying B: to A: - Press Enter when ready to proceed ...
Copying 1440 Kb
Cyl c Hd h (counts while copying)
Done
>
COPYANY will not reproduce a self-mountable copy of a 1.44 Mb
disk. It will copy the high-capacity portion of the disk if the disk is
mounted. The resulting copy can then be converted with HCFORMAT /+M if
desired. COPYANY cannot copy the unmounted disk.
PROBLEMS/COMPATIBILITY NOTES
----------------------------
Compatibility with DOS versions and different types of PCs:
HCFORMAT has been extensively tested with PCDOS and MSDOS V3.3 through
V6.0, on a variety of 286/386/486 machines including IBM, Compaq,
Toshiba, AST, Zenith, clones with various AMI and Phoenix BIOS versions,
and on systems with various combinations of floppy and hard disks. The
utilities have been made compatible with the few quirks found, and
should operate reliably on any machine.
DOS problems:
The HC TSR driver is dependent on one major assumption about the way
that DOS operates: DOS always tests for a hardware disk change
indication prior to accessing the disk, and reads the new disk
parameters from the boot sector if a change is detected. The driver
relies on this action to detect when a HC disk requiring translation is
inserted. This is a very safe assumption, since DOS is designed to
operate this way. However, there are a few cases where programs or DOS
itself may violate this assumption. In particular, DOS may fail to
re-read the type of disk from the boot sector after a disk change
indication if the same disk is re-inserted. This will result in a disk
read failure if you remove and re-insert a disk with 1024-byte
sectors, since the disk change indication causes the HC TSR driver to
stop translating the disk format until the new disk type is read.
If this should happen, simply remove and re-insert the disk, and then
do a DIR listing on it (always a good idea when inserting a new HC
disk). An example of a program bypassing the disk type check after a
disk change is probably the bug in PKZIP V2.04C reported below.
Some older versions of DOS (like Zenith DOS V3.3+) fail to recheck the
disk parameters between operations. This can cause strange effects
(like reporting the wrong amount of free space on the disk) if you
have issued a command which changes the disk parameters without
physically switching disks (e.g. MOUNT, or HCFORMAT /Q). Issuing a
CHKDSK command after such operations avoids problems with these older
versions of DOS.
BIOS variations:
A minor BIOS quirk which you may notice is that the floppy disk controller
on some machines returns an error code reported by DOS as "General failure"
rather than the correct "Sector not found" when attempting to read a
disk with 1024-byte sectors without the HC TSR driver installed.
HCFORMAT therefore assumes that the BIOS might return almost any error
code when initially accessing such a disk in order to work on all
machines.
Another variation between machines is whether or not the BIOS will
handle 960/984 Kb disks without the HC TSR driver installed. The BIOS
on most machines automatically tries all 3 possible data rates
(500/300/250 Kbps) on each newly loaded disk to find the correct one,
regardless of physical drive type. However, on some machines the BIOS
does not do this (e.g. AMI and Phoenix 386 BIOS clones), and the disk
is not readable without the driver to select the correct data rate.
Even when the data rate is selected correctly, the BIOS does not know
whether there should be 40 or 80 tracks on this type of disk - some
machines correctly assume 80 tracks (e.g. Zenith, AST), while others
incorrectly assume 40 tracks (e.g. Compaq, Phoenix 286 BIOS clones).
If the BIOS assumes 80 tracks, DOS can read the disk without
translation. If not, then the HC TSR driver is required to set 80-track
mode, and the disk must be made self-mountable if you may want to use it
on another such system which does not have the driver installed.
If the BIOS of the target machine does not automatically recognize the
300 Kbps data rate on a 3.5" 960/984 Kb disk, the disk cannot self-mount
on that machine (while it might be possible to create a unique
self-mounting 960/984 Kb format for such machines, it's really too much
trouble since they are the exception). The fallback procedures
described above for changing the drive media state byte or drive type
will work around the problem if you are ever stuck needing to read the
disk on such a machine without the HC TSR driver.
Most BIOS and DOS versions need the HC TSR driver to select 80-track
mode for 720-820 Kb 5.25" disks, but there are a few BIOS versions
around which do so on their own, whether by accident or because they are
smarter. On these machines you may find that the 720-820 Kb 5.25" disks
are readable without the driver.
Disk Repair Utilities (e.g. Norton Disk Doctor):
Most disk utilities accept the high capacity formats without problems.
However, disk repair utilities like Norton Disk Doctor should not be
allowed to attempt FAT repairs on high capacity diskettes. Since they
do not recognize the specific format, they may assume that the FAT is
damaged and attempt to "repair" it by converting it to one of the
standard DOS formats. (For that matter, I have not found these disk
repair utilities to be intelligent enough to turn loose on any disk.)
The best defence against disk problems is to run a FAT backup utiltity
like MIRROR or IMAGE on the disk - you can then recover the files if the
disk is damaged by quick-formatting it and running the corresponding FAT
recovery utiltiy.
PKZIP V2.04C/V2.04E
PKZIP version 2.04C had a problem with non-standard disks when using its
new option to span multiple disks with a single ZIP file. The problem
appears as a "Sector not found" error when loading the 3rd or 4th disk
of a high-capacity backup set. Apparently PKZIP bypasses DOS and
assumes that new disks are the same format as the previous one, instead
of following the normal practice of reading the boot sector to determine
the disk format. The maintenance release 2.04E of PKZIP (which quickly
followed the inital 2.04C release of version 2) fixed this problem.
Using DOS disks in an Apple MacIntosh:
Newer Macs can read and write the DOS 1.44 Mb HD floppy disk format using
utilities such as Apple File Exchange or DOS Mounter. The HC formats
are NOT compatible with these utilities, and cannot be used to exchange
data with a Mac.
TIPS
----
Running HCFORMAT under Windows:
Make sure that you load the HC TSR driver BEFORE starting Windows;
otherwise it will be loaded only for a single temporary DOS session.
Making multi-disk sets self-mounting:
Only the first disk of a multi-disk set need be made self-mounting - all
subsequent disks will be automatically mounted once the HC TSR driver is
installed from the first disk.
Maximum number of tracks:
Many drives will successfully read and format 83 or 84 tracks, but the
lowest common denominator appears to be 82 (the HCFORMAT default).
Experiment if you like, but best to stick to 82 maximum for
compatibility between drives.
Compatibility with untested machines:
If you are trying an HCFORMAT disk on a new machine or a different
version of DOS, it is a good idea to check out the disk with CHKDSK
and DIR after inserting it, MOUNTing it, reformatting it, or
quick-formatting it. As noted above under Compatibility Notes, there
are some quirks to beware of with older versions of DOS.
RELEASE HISTORY
---------------
V0.9 - Beta test
V1.0 - Initial release
- BIOS/FDC variations between different machines accomodated
V1.1 - HCMOUNT combined into MOUNT, separate UNMOUNT utility added
- HCFORMAT aborts immediately if disk is write-protected
- A few other improved error messages
V1.2 - 960 Kb format added, other disk formats unchanged from previous
versions (note: V1.0 or V1.1 of the HC TSR driver will correctly
handle 960 Kb disks)
- HCTSR, MOUNT, and UNMOUNT combined into HCFORMAT to make a single
program with multiple functions; only COPYANY is still separate
- The HC TSR driver now incorporates disk mounting (formerly found
in MOUNT.EXE only); this makes the driver slightly larger, but
makes it easier to use self-mountable disks transparently (note:
MOUNT.EXE V1.2 is not identical to earlier versions of MOUNT.EXE
which may be found on existing self-mountable disks, but is
compatible)
- TSR On/Off commands added to HCFORMAT to replace the
corresponding functions of MOUNT/UNMOUNT; Off command disables
the TSR entirely (rather than just for self-mountable disks),
allowing some internal simplifications
- Status display command has been added to HCFORMAT to check status
of the TSR and drive format translation (note: the STATUS command
shows V1.0 or V1.1 of the HC TSR driver as "V1.0", and cannot
display the drive format translation with this version of the
TSR)
- HCFORMAT can now format new self-mountable disks in one step, and
can make existing 720/800/960 Kb disks self-mountable without
removing the existing contents (note slight change in /M switch
syntax)
- Floppy drives now reset when enabling the HC TSR driver
V1.3 - 82-track formats added (1.804/1.476 Mb and 984/820 Kb)
- /T:tt switch to adjust number of tracks
- simplified formatting options added: /L /3
- DD formats now use single-sector cluster size (except 720 Kb
format remains with 2-sector cluster size for 3.5"/5.25"
compatibility)
- root directory size is reduced on 800/820 Kb disks to allow space
on cylinder 0 for MOUNT.EXE in self-mounting format