21 Feb
2008
21 Feb
'08
1:40 p.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
In my humble opinion, what's really needed is a
quick and reliable
non-contact method of recovering floppy data. Perhaps one of the
more modern head technologies, such as GMR might be suitable for a
head that doesn't contact the media.
Would a non-contact head 'fly' properly at floppy speeds, though? (I'm not
sure how much more rotational speed you could get out of a floppy, even
jacketless - I suspect the media is just too flexible)
Or maybe we need to revive the "magnasee and
laser" method.
Would magnasee work usefully at floppy bit densities? I thought it was mainly
intended to detect track-level problems and large areas of damage, but could
easily be wrong there.
Increasingly, I'm seeing 5.25" diskettes with
media flaking.
It might be that we're starting to approach the "use by" date with
some brands and need to resort to other approaches.
I keep wondering about running the whole lot - disk and drive mechanism - in
some 'bath' of something-or-other. It's another matter whether it would a)
help and b) work at all :-) Anything which keeps friction/heat between the
disk and heads to a minimum seems like a good idea, though.
Someone elsewhere came up with the concept of 'scanning' a floppy surface in
some kind of flat-bed scanner device (and then post-processing to convert X-Y
motion into rotational). I don't think there's any practical way of doing that
right now, but maybe one day. There's a nice advantage in that the media
itself (the critical, fragile bit!) doesn't have to actually move in any way.
cheers
Jules