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 Disk Smart Format - 3.5" Floppy disk formatter
This utility was written back in 1999. Where was it when I needed it? I've thrown away at least 50 floppies since 1999. This utility promises to reformat most floppy disks that the regular format chokes on. It also will format a 1.44mb disk so that it hold 1.72mb. Now that's a bonus.
Quote from the website
http://ieeecrce.tripod.com/innovations99/tformat/
  • Format disks even if they have bad sectors on track zero
  • Format standard 1.44 MB disks for 1.72 MB using standard hardware (Almost 20% gain in capacity). This is achieved without any kind of data compression.
  • No drivers or TSRs need to be installed
  • Verify-Only option for previously formatted floppies speeds up format by about 60%
  • Wipe-Only option serves to quickly and easily clear disks of their contents, even if there are multiple sub-directory levels and errors like cross-linked files and lost clusters.
  • Disks formatted with SmartFormat have less bad (unusable) space than when formatted with DOS or Windows.
  • Rather than the unintelligible hexadecimal numbers used by other format programs for disk serial numbers (like 1B2C-19F4), SmartFormat uses the date and time. For example, a disk formatted at 11:35 PM on 15th September has serial number 2335-1509.
  • User friendly interface. Fully descriptive and easy to understand error messages.
Clif Notes Freeware and Website Reviews