Some Notes about HD Disks
Using HD Disks as DD Disks
- You can do this, although they can be less-reliable.
- The Amiga doesn't care about the type of disk (unless you have an Amiga HD floppy drive)
- The PC floppy drives do care. You must make sure you cover the HD hole if you are doing this or data wont be written/read correctly.
How HD disks are detected (this is important)
- Internally, the drive uses a switch to detect the presence of an HD disk, and it uses this to change internal timings and filters on the incoming data.
- This switch position is not exposed in any way at the drive connector.
- The only way that a disk can be detected as DD or HD on a PC drive is to read some of the data and guess. This is why PC disks were always purchased pre-formatted.
- If you need a disk to be treated as HD, it needs to have had at least track 0 formatted as HD (PC, Amiga, doesn't matter). For a disk to be treated as DD, it needs to have at least track 0 formatted as DD.
- I have included options in my applications and in the WinUAE config to force detection as DD or HD as a work-around if you really get stuck.
- You can use these DD and HD ADF files if you need to format a disk.
