It sounds like you may be working with a low density 3.5 720Kb floppy disk.
I am pretty sure that most newer systems are able to read and write to them
however, older systems (probably over 7 or 8 years old), will only be able
to use low density. In order to format this disk, you will have to change
your format settings to low density. You can tell if this is the case by
looking at the disk, If it is a high density 1.44mb disk, it should have CH
somewhere on it.

>Can anyone tell me if there is any deffernce between different brands of
>standard 1.44mb floppy drives?
>I'm asking because i have problem to format floppy disks.
>I have a P233 mmx PC (same as my friend's PC but differnt monitor, whhh
>~~~, i don't have AOE) and an old 386 (8mb ram).  I need transfer some
>data (word 2.0 doc) from 386 to my new PC.  The problem is i can copy
>data from the floppy (to new computer) but when i tried to format (in
>"My Computer") the floppy (full format),  Win95 can't complete the task
>because reported a error on floppy (scandisk can't fix).  Then i ran
>norton disk doc on 386 to fix it, NDD reported directory structure error
>and lost chains.  After fix it, there was almost nothing on floppy.
>Then i format it on 386 (no problem at all), took it back to my new PC
>and tried to formant it again, same problem.  Then i tried other floppy,
>i found another one has same prblem and the rest are okay (they are all
>my old formatted floppy).
>so that i thought there maybe difference between floppy drive, is it
>ture (i hope not)???