Zip Drive Question

[Dave C.]

I have a 250 Meg zip drive (Winxp). I own a half dozen 100Meg zip disks.
Is there a workaround to format these at 250 Meg? They work OK at 100 Meg,
but I could use the 250 Meg capacity.

 

[Cerridwen]

I have a 250 Meg zip drive (Winxp). I own a half dozen 100Meg zip
disks. Is there a workaround to format these at 250 Meg? They work
OK at 100 Meg, but I could use the 250 Meg capacity.

Let's see. I have a 100GB hard disk, can I format it so that it can hold
250GB?!

This is what is technically called a stupid question. Of course you can't?!
Can I format a 700MB CD so that it holds 1575MB?

 

[Dave C.]

Well, a long time ago, when the 1.44 meg floppies came out, the previous
720ks could be formatted to 1.44 meg......a matter of track width, and some
other things that I do no fully understand. With that in mind, the thought
that the 250s might have half the track width than the 100s. There is some
sort of key that identifies which disk is in the drive. If that is easy to
identify, if it could be over ridden, and the head can drive the 100meg
media hard enough, and that a bunch of other things worked out, it could
work. I'm just trying to salvage some 100s because of capacity that I
need.

However, the magnetic media of the 720s were different enough compared to
the 1.44, that there always posed a reliability risk. For low reliability
uses, it was satisfactory.

Just thought someone might have an idea on this........