Hi,

If you are trying to write a floppy disk image, and the name seems to imply that, then you wouldn't use regular copy for that as that would simply write the disk image as a file to the disk, however that would simply result in an out-of-space kind of error message not an unrecognized error one, so there seems to be some other issue at play here.

Can you write a small file, for example a simple .txt containing a single sentence to the floppy? If that also gives an error then that would help pinpoint the error better as this error message is not very specific about what happened.

Also can you post whether you are using an in-built floppy drive or an external USB one?

MagefromAntares wrote on Today, 08:47:

Hi,

If you are trying to write a floppy disk image, and the name seems to imply that, then you wouldn't use regular copy for that as that would simply write the disk image as a file to the disk, however that would simply result in an out-of-space kind of error message not an unrecognized error one, so there seems to be some other issue at play here.

Sorry I dont understand what the term "write" means hear!
I was copying and pasting the file over

MagefromAntares wrote on Today, 08:47:

Can you write a small file, for example a simple .txt containing a single sentence to the floppy? If that also gives an error then that would help pinpoint the error better as this error message is not very specific about what happened.

Again not sure what you mean by "write". But I have opened the notepad program and written "test" saved it to A drive as "test" and all went ok. Took the Fdisk out put it back in again opened it up and there the file was, opened the file and it read test. Now written test 01, done the above again and all good!

MagefromAntares wrote on Today, 08:47:

Also can you post whether you are using an in-built floppy drive or an external USB one?

It is the proper traditional 3.5" type of floppy drive that they appear to no longer make anymore. Connects to the MB with grey ribbon cable (smaller then the IDE one, dont know the name for it though). Not the USB newer types that are sold new now

Thanks

Most common floppy disk errors are caused by the buildup of "crud" on the head over time, corrected by a bit of alcohol (the cleaning kind, not the kind that some people use to "solve" problems 😀 ) on a special "cleaning" disk.

You cam test for this by seeing if you can format the floppy and then copy SMALL files to it (less than a meg) - if no, you probably have to clean the drive.

You also have to make sure the file you are copying is not too large for the available space on the drive.

Otherwise, we have to know exactly what you are trying to write to the disk and how you are doing so.

If you are trying to create a working floppy disk from a floppy disk image file (typically .IMG) you need a tool to do that,
something like my own XDISK.COM (DOS/Win95/98) or DSKWRITE.EXE (Win32/64) - I have these available in DBDOS.ZIP on my site.

Im from Windows wrote on Today, 10:09:

... Sorry I dont understand what the term "write" means hear! ...

The act of putting something (anything) on a disk is called "writing" the disk. Like putting information on a piece of paper with a pen.

(and just to be clean - sitting a coffee cup physically on top of a disk jacket - is NOT writing it! 😀 )

DaveDDS wrote on Today, 10:47:

Most common floppy disk errors are caused by the buildup of "crud" on the head over time, corrected by a bit of alcohol (the cleaning kind, not the kind that some people use to "solve" problems 😀 ) on a special "cleaning" disk.

So its a special Fdisk that has alcohol inside of it

DaveDDS wrote on Today, 10:47:

You cam test for this by seeing if you can format the floppy and then copy SMALL files to it (less than a meg) - if no, you probably have to clean the drive.

Formats fine!

DaveDDS wrote on Today, 10:47:

You also have to make sure the file you are copying is not too large for the available space on the drive. […]
Show full quote

You also have to make sure the file you are copying is not too large for the available space on the drive.

Otherwise, we have to know exactly what you are trying to write to the disk and how you are doing so.

If you are trying to create a working floppy disk from a floppy disk image file (typically .IMG) you need a tool to do that,
something like my own XDISK.COM (DOS/Win95/98) or DSKWRITE.EXE (Win32/64) - I have these available in DBDOS.ZIP on my site.

The file type is a 7z and 644kb of data
Hope that helps!

DaveDDS wrote on Today, 10:55:

Im from Windows wrote on Today, 10:09:

... Sorry I dont understand what the term "write" means hear! ...

The act of putting something (anything) on a disk is called "writing" the disk. Like putting information on a piece of paper with a pen.

(and just to be clean - sitting a coffee cup physically on top of a disk jacket - is NOT writing it! 😀 )

So that would include copy+paste and save as then?

Im from Windows wrote on Today, 11:06:

DaveDDS wrote on Today, 10:47:

Most common floppy disk errors are caused by the buildup of "crud" on the head over time, corrected by a bit of alcohol (the cleaning kind, not the kind that some people use to "solve" problems 😀 ) on a special "cleaning" disk.

So its a special Fdisk that has alcohol inside of it

Cleaning disks come in a few different types - the most common look mostly like a "normal" disk except that the flexible "disk" inside isn't dark colored media, it's a material (usually white) which can absorb a a few drops of cleaning alcohol (supplied with the disk in a small bottle) and release it when pressed between the heads as it spins and "cleans".

Formats fine!

Most likely the drive is OK - but to be sure I would write and read back some data.

The file type is a 7z and 644kb of data
Hope that helps!

.7Z is a fairly typical compressed file format, and is NOT an image.
644kb should be well within the capacity of a freshly formatted 3.5" HD disk.

It's possible that you have a DD disk, which looks almost the same as an HD d isk (only the small hole with the slider, not the second small hole - both near the end away from the sliding media cover)
But even in that case, with only 720k capacity it should still be enough, and Windows should be telling you if a disk is too small, not giving you the general error message.

What capacity does Windows say is available on the disk.

If you're not sure how, you can go to a command prompt and enter: >dir A:
which will show you any files on the disk and report it's "bytes free".

If the disk is truly freshly formatted and there's nothing on it, it might not show "bytes free"
in which can you can do:

> DIR A: >A:\X
> type A:\X

This will also "write" the directory listing to a file called "X" on A: - and if above TYPE works you know the drive and write/read!

Failing that you need more diagnostics.

Exactly what OS are you running? If Win95/98 you can boot to DOS and use my ImageDisk package (available on "Daves Old Computers" which has some fairly comprehensive floppy drive capabilities.

If you don't have access to true DOS, you need a working floppy drive (to create/boot the stand-alone ImageDisk setup), or a working CD/DVD writer (I include a file to convert BOOTIMD.IMG to BOOTIMD.ISO which you can write to CD/DVD (assuming your system supports boot from CD/DVD)

Im from Windows wrote on Today, 11:07:

DaveDDS wrote on Today, 10:55:

Im from Windows wrote on Today, 10:09:

... Sorry I dont understand what the term "write" means hear! ...

The act of putting something (anything) on a disk is called "writing" the disk. Like putting information on a piece of paper with a pen.

So that would include copy+paste and save as then?

Any operation that changes whats recorded on the disk is writing it.
This includes placing a file on it (by either copy, paste or save)
and even things like erasing a file on it or formatting it! (although this isn't thought of as "putting something on", think of "something" as "free space" in this case)!

seeing your first screenshot you have downloaded the Win98 SE bootdisk image off winworldpc. To expand on what Dave said, this file is a 7z file, for "7zip". It's just another compression format like zip or rar. You need to extract the content of that archive with 7zip, it contains the .img file of the boot disk Dave was talking about. You need to "write" that image (and NOT copy-paste the file onto the floppy) using a specialised bit of software for that exact purpose - writing image files back to floppies.

See an image as an instantaneous snapshot of a whole floppy, that is captured as an .img file. You can then "replay" that snapshot onto a fresh floppy using appropriate software and you end up with a (relatively) perfect copy of the original one. Dave gave you a few pointers to such software.

All true ... but it doesn't explain the error - he should have ended up with an (unusable) floppy disk containing a 644k .7z file.

It doesn't explain why the FDC "reported an error not recognized by the driver".

Perhaps there's something in the name that Winblows decides should be written differently (who knows - I've seen some weird senseless things from the big MS), you could try renaming it - but that still wouldn't get you a bookable disk.

You need to get 7zip to extract the actual image fike, then write to disk using a tool like I suggested earlier.

True, just putting that aside as an edge-case with a long "modern" 7z filename (file is "Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition - Boot Disk (3.5-1.44mb).7z" that WinXP is maybe not happy about and rolling with the fact he said format and copying a basic .txt file worked fine 😀

Boohyaka wrote on Today, 14:08:

True, just putting that aside as an edge-case with a long "modern" 7z filename (file is "Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition - Boot Disk (3.5-1.44mb).7z" that WinXP is maybe not happy about and rolling with the fact he said format and copying a basic .txt file worked fine 😀

Exactly ... Hence my suggestion to try rename (something simple/short like W98BOOT.7Z)

That wouldn't give a boot disk, but might be more informative as to what the actual problem is.

One would hope that MS in distributing a boot disk image for an OS would make the name compatible with that OS, but you never know - strange things have come from there.

Depending on what OS is currently running, could be one of several aspects of the "long filename" - length, embedded spaces, embedded '.'s
Long names were in their infancy <= W98 ... but I would hope if the problem were syntax or unable to read that file, MS would have generated a more indicative message than "unknown floppy controller" error. - in fact it points to a piece of hardware which isn't really relevant to the reported error - but ... that's MS!

and ... once you get the actual image from the .7z, might not be a bad idea to rename it to something simple/short as well!