Distribution Media Format

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Distribution Media Format (DMF) is a format for floppy disks that Microsoft used to distribute software. It allowed the disk to contain 1680KB (1.64MB) of data on a 3½-inch disk, instead of the more standard 1.44 MB. As a side effect, utilities had to specially support the format in order to read and write the disks, which made software piracy of products distributed on this media more difficult. The first Microsoft software product that uses DMF for distribution were the 'c' revisions of Office 4.x. It also was the first software product to use CAB files (then called "Diamond").

Comparison of DMF and standard 1.44MB 3½-inch diskettes:

	1.44MB	DMF
Tracks	80	80
Sectors per track	18	21
Cluster size	512 bytes	1024 or 2048 bytes
Root directory entries	224	16

[edit] See also

• 2M, a program that allows the formatting of high capacity floppy disks
• fdformat, a program that allows the formatting of high capacity floppy disks
• MAXI Disk, a program that allows the formatting of high capacity floppy disks
• XDF, a high-density diskette format used by IBM

[edit] External links

• About DMF