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     Floppy Disks in Music Keyboards

FLOPPY DENSITY

Today's HD or "high-density" floppy-disk storage format has been around since 1987.  It stores about 1,440 kilobytes of data on the two sides of a 3-1/2" floppy disk.

The previous generation of formatting is DD or "double-density".  It maps out just 720 KB on a nearly identical disk.  You can often use either HD or DD disks as long as they're formatted correctly.  Although their recording surfaces are formulated differently, there's no harm in trying to substitute media.

DISK SIDES

Today, all floppies are double-sided, meaning they're okay to record on both sides.  Originally, only one side of a disk was recordable.  Single-sided, double-density disks are called SSDD or 1DD.  The floppies you buy today are rated 2HD (double-sided, high-density).

At first, single-sided drives were more reliable because they have only one movable recording head.  Double-sided drives have two movable heads, one above and one below the disk, making them more susceptible to crosstalk.  But by the mid 1980's most drives took double-sided double-density disks, called DSDD or 2DD.

FLOPPY DISK NOTCHES

High-density floppy disks have two notches in their plastic shell whereas double-density disks have just one.  Every disk's left side (as you insert it) has a write-protect notch.  It has a shade you can slide open with the tip of a pen to prevent the drive from writing to it.

A second notch, on the disk's right, indicates that it's high-density.  Some drive units and operating systems, however, don't have a sensor to check for this right-hand notch.

The Korg® X3 synthesizer, for example, will accept disks with or without the right-hand notch.  But the Windows operating system won't treat a disk as double-density if it has the notch.  You must put tape over the right-hand notch of an HD floppy to fool Windows into treating it like an older disk.  Any tape is okay as long as it blocks light.

FORMATTING A DISK FOR DOUBLE-DENSITY IN WINDOWS^®:

1. Tape over the floppy disk's density notch if it has one.
   
   
2. Insert the disk into your computer's floppy disk drive.
   
   
3. Select Run... from the Windows Start menu, or just press:
   <WINDOWS KEY> + R
   
   
4. Type:
   CMD <ENTER>
   If CMD is already there, you can just press <ENTER>.
   
   
5. In the command window, type:
   FORMAT A: /T:80 /N:9 <ENTER>
   

For more information on your operating system's Format command, type:
FORMAT /? <ENTER>

To toggle the command window into or out of "Full Screen Mode", press:
<ALT> + <ENTER>

After formatting, you can drag and drop downloaded files to the floppy using Windows.  You can also load and save to it from a keyboard like the Korg X3.

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