4 May
2005
4 May
'05
12:25 p.m.
On Wed, 4 May 2005, Jim Leonard wrote:
Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
This being the case, it still doesn't explain, as Jules edified, why
contemporary 3.5" disks suck and older 3.5" media worked fine.
It also wouldn't explain why we have 300GB hard drives today that work
just as reliably if not more so than 10MB drives of 20 years ago.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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That's a really good question. I'd like
an answer myself. I routinely
read disks that are 20-25-30 years old with few problems, yet I can't walk
10 feet to another computer and recover a file I just copied onto a modern
3.5" disk without the disk going bad. Go figure.
Two words: Track density. Old 5.25" disks spread (in the case of IBM
PC-land) 180KB per side of 5.25" surface area... later disks crammed
four times as much in roughly half the surface area. I have had exactly
one 5.25" disk go bad in storage in the last 25 years, but my 3.5" disks
haven't been as lucky.