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Help: How To migrate 3 1/2" disks from 386 system to winXP

L

luis_orihuela

Member
Joined
Aug 26, 2010
Messages
43
Location
Toluca, Mexico
Hi,

I have been trying with out success to my 386 DOS 3.5" diskettes to a Hard drive on my XP Running computer with out success. Seems like the DOS format is not known to XP. Does someone knows how to migrate diskettes.

Regards

Luis
 
As expected, I formatted a 1.44M diskette in one of my 286s (running IBM DOS 3.3), copied some files to that diskette, then read the diskette on my XP machine.

I recently did data recovery/conversion for someone. One of the provided disks was a 720K and initially I couldn't get anything off it. Turned out that it had been formatted as a 1.44M. Once I drilled a hole in the plastic where the density hole is on a 1.44M diskette, the diskette could then be read by my machines. A similar issue probably exists the other way - 1.44M formatted as a 720K.
 
If said disks were infected by a boot-sector virus, XP will return a "general failure" error no matter what you do. XP also does not understand early (e.g. 1.1) DOS floppies. Similarly, there are also some oddball early 3.5" DOS machines that use their own bizarre format (e.g. HP-150). The same can be said about Japanese PC98 format floppies (as well as the obvious issue about rotational speed).

As the previous posters have noted, be certain that the correct media is being used for the format--you may have to tape over the density indicator hole if these are 1.44M diskettes recorded with a 720K format.

Also be certain that your floppy drive will support reading 720K floppies--some late ones don't.
 
The error message I am getting is A:\ is not accessible. NO ID address mark was found on the floppy disk., and I am trying to migrate the info of those old diskettes to a HD to use them later on a DosBOX.

Do you think the 3 mode driver can solve this?

Regards Luis
 
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