Yes, it may work in a pinch for short-term solutions, but I don't advise it. I tried an experiment with a 1.4MB disk in March 1995. I formatted it as 800K (with a Plus) and stuck a few Kid Pix documents on it. I used it in two different Macs--an SE SuperDrive and an LC--and after about six days of being accessed about three-four times daily it conked out.
The disk was pretty messed up--I couldn't reformat it as a 1.4MB--it said it was damaged. Your mileage may vary, but that's my story.

There's a good section in the older editions of Mac Secrets on this topic.

Click to expand...

Please carefully re-read what I wrote. Whether or not you "advise it" is -ahem- quite beside the point. Your own data support that it can work for a short time, and that's all you need to take care of an emergency. I'm not quite sure why you seem to be taking such a zealously negative position. Just give folks the facts and let them run with them, I say. They're not infants.

Reading Mac Secrets' discussion on the topic is unlikely to be further enlightening. With due respect to the authors of that tome, I doubt they can add anything to the points I've made, viz:

1) It's unreliable in the long term.

2) It can work in the short term (and there are definite steps one can take to increase the short term reliability)

3) If you understand and acknowledge 1) and 2), and live within the limitations implied therein, then there's no problem.

Btw, your "messed up" disk could've been revived easily with a good degaussing. I've run many experiments because I was curious why the reliability was poor. Identifying the quantitative differences between the media suggested that degaussing would materially improve reliability. Experimentation verified the correctness of the hypothesis.

I'm not exactly clear on the relevance of March 1995, but while we're exchanging random data, my first experiments were run around Arbor Day in 1990.