China DOS Union

Experts, please talk about how much the capacity of a 1.44MB 3.5-inch floppy can be increased under DOS, with the requirement that the partition format must not be changed to display fake information.
I once used a formatting tool and a floppy compression tool to get a floppy to 113MB of usable space; of course the prerequisite was the compression ratio.
Physically usable, the highest can be 2.6MB, and data really can be written to it, but the disk is very easy to damage. And when you want to use it, you have to use another disk to put the relevant tools on it, just like the solar-powered flashlight in Stephen Chow's 007 completely unnecessary.

The unformatted capacity of a 1.44M floppy is around 2M.
Generally speaking, a good floppy has no problem being formatted to 1.72M, and it is best to use HD-COPY to format it. Because if there is a problem, you can still rescue the data through HD-COPY, which is relatively safe. Although special formats can get a bit more capacity, it should not be encouraged.
The files above can use storage formats with higher compression. WINDOWS can use CAB, ACE, RAR. DOS can use RAR, AIN, etc.
I do not approve of whole-disk compression on floppies, because in fact the software part that manages the compressed disk already takes up a large part of the floppy's capacity. Although setting the compression ratio higher can make its capacity look very "large", for example setting the compression ratio to 10:1 lets you see the floppy's capacity become over 10M, but in reality how many files can reach a compression ratio of 1/10?

Right, speaking of floppy capacity, I remember there is a 2.88M option in the BIOS.
But I have never seen a 2.88M floppy.

I wonder whether any of you have ever seen one, or whether there is any way to format a floppy as 2.88M.

2.88M floppies and 1.44M floppies are different types, just as 720K floppies and 1.44M floppies are also different types. But I have never seen a 2.88M floppy either.

2.88M is a special specification and requires a new type of floppy drive, but this kind of floppy drive has never been seen in the domestic market.

Why? Isn't 2.88M better than 1.44M?

Probably because ZIP floppy drives and the like had already come out at that time.

But ZIP floppy drives also never became widely used in practice!

The maximum capacity of a 1.44M floppy can reach 1.96M, I think, but what can really be used is only about 1.7M. There used to be a software called 2M that could format a floppy to nearly 2M of space, but I used many disks and found that only around 1.7M could store data without too many problems

1.72 is the limit for normal use, I think.

2.88M is a special specification made by the Japanese, and it did not become popular anywhere in the world either.
As for floppies, my personal view is that if there is no need, it is best not to expand the capacity and format them for use. It is like a fat person forcing himself into a skinny person's clothes; it is easy to damage.
I mean "when there is no need". If there really is a need, do not exceed 1.722Mb either. I have formatted to this capacity many times using Hd-copy (version 2.0), and basically there were not many problems. Beyond this number it is not very reliable.
Because of my work, I often use floppies, so floppies are easily damaged. Here I will introduce a little experience to everyone: if the floppy is not badly damaged, you can treat the floppy with a fairly strong magnet (for example the magnet steel from a speaker), and then format it with Hd-copy. In many cases, a floppy that originally could not be formatted can be formatted again. But be sure to remember: never use Microsoft's formatting tool on this floppy again. Once you use it, if things go badly the floppy will be completely finished!

There is a software called ramdisk that can emulate a floppy on the hard disk; as long as you set it, it can be as big as you want!!! he42@Hotmail.com

That virtual one is not a floppy, but a hard disk, right?

Seems hd formats it to 1.72! On my machine it only shows 1.68! I don't don't know why! But if going off-topic is okay, then you should just use a USB flash drive!