Formatting Disks
To use a floppy disk or other magnetic media, it must be formatted or initialized for the computer on which it will be used. A Mac OS computer can format disks for three different computer platforms:
Mac OS—for Macintosh and Macintosh-compatible computers.
MS-DOS—for Intel-based computer systems, including systems running Microsoft Windows and OS/2.
ProDOS—for old Apple II computers.
Tip
The terms formatting and initializing are sometimes used interchangeably. Although these two words don't mean exactly the same thing, they're close enough for our purposes.
Tip
Nowadays, most removable magnetic media come preformatted. If you buy preformatted disks, make sure they are formatted for Macintosh computers. Otherwise, you'll have to ...
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