Backups of Distibution Floppies

[Pete Holsberg]

In article <241 at vector.Dallas.TX.US> chip at vector.Dallas.TX.US (Chip Rosenthal) writes:
=In article <752 at mccc.UUCP> pjh at mccc.UUCP (Pete Holsberg) writes:
=>... or are they *NIX-formatted disks?  
=
=There is no such thing as a "unix-formatted" disk.

Then why does *NIX have a command called "format" (or whatever)?

=You have to realize that there are two levels of formatting for magnetic
=media:  physical formatting and logical formatting.  

I do, I do!

=When you do a "format", whether it be under DOS, XENIX, Microport or
=whatever, you are putting down the physical format.  The DOS FORMAT command
=then goes on to put other goo on the disk, like boot and fat blocks[2].
=Under unix, this is broken out in a seperate step called "mkfs".

Oh, so there is no such thing as a *nix-formatted disk -- there are (at least)
three kinds of *nix-formatted disk, right?

=If you've got a utility which just copies the raw data on the disk, then
=it matters not what the logical format is, just that the physical format
=be understood.  Under DOS you've got DISKCOPY.  Under unix, there's dd.

So then, DISKCOPY only cares that the source floppy and destination floppy
both have 80 tracks laid out at 96 tracks per inch, and that the recording
density is "high", with 15 sectors per track, right?

I also have some floppies marked "96 tpi, 80 tracks, single sided, double
density" and others marked "single sided quad density".  Where do they fit
into the spectrum of PC-type diskettes?

(Incidentally, I tried mailing to you several times but it always bounced.)

Thanks for the help.
Pete

-- 
Pete Holsberg, Mercer County Community College, Trenton, NJ 08690  
{backbone}!rutgers!njin!princeton!njsmu!mccc!pjh