Distribution Media Format
# Distribution Media Format

Distribution Media Format (DMF) is a format for floppy disks that Microsoft used to distribute software. It allowed the disk to contain 1680KiB of data on a 3.mw-parser-output .frac{white-space:nowrap}.mw-parser-output .frac .num,.mw-parser-output .frac .den{font-size:80%;line-height:0;vertical-align:super}.mw-parser-output .frac .den{vertical-align:sub}.mw-parser-output .sr-only{border:0;clip:rect(0,0,0,0);clip-path:polygon(0px 0px,0px 0px,0px 0px);height:1px;margin:-1px;overflow:hidden;padding:0;position:absolute;width:1px}1⁄2-inch disk, instead of the standard 1440KiB. As a side effect, utilities had to specially support the format in order to read and write the disks, which made copying of products distributed on this medium more difficult. An Apple Macintosh computer running Disk Copy 6.3.3 on the Mac OS 7.6 or later operating system can copy and make DMF disks. The first Microsoft software product that uses DMF for distribution were the "c" revisions of Office4.x. It also was the first software product to use CAB files, then called "Diamond".

Comparison of DMF and standard 1440 KiB 31⁄2-inch diskettes:

| | 1440 KiB | DMF |
| - | - | - |
| Tracks | 80 | 80 |
| Sectors per track | 18 | 21 |
| Cluster size | 512 bytes | 1024 or 2048 bytes |
| Root directory entries | 224 | 16 |

DMF in the form of a 1680 KiB Virtual Floppy Disk (VFD) image and IBM Extended Density Format (XDF) images are supported by Windows Virtual PC.

