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HFS+ Floppy Disks.

napabar

Well-known member
Here's something interesting I've stumbled upon.

I remember back when Apple introduced HFS+ with System 8.1. I could format Zip Disks with the new file system, but not Floppy Disks. IIRC, there was around a 40MB minimum to use HFS+.

I was messing around with a USB Floppy Drive recently on Snow Leopard, and I realized I could format it with HFS+! Surely, a classic Mac wouldn't support using this disk, but it did! It worked perfectly well on my WallStreet running 8.6!

It's gets better.

Ever notice how Apple didn't let you share a Floppy Disk back in the classic Mac OS days? Well, by dumb luck, I had an HFS+ floppy in my 8.6 machine, and when I logged into it from another machine as the owner, the Floppy Disk showed up and could be mounted! I know you could share floppies with FTP software like Rumpus, or some 3rd party AppleShare compliant software, like EasyShare, but this is the first time I've seen Apple's built in AppleShare do it. Must have been some glitch in their code. Since they didn't let you format HFS+ floppies, AppleShare must assume any HFS+ disk is eligible for sharing!

 
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