9 Dec
2018
9 Dec
'18
3:43 p.m.
At 02:29 PM 9/12/2018 -0800, Al wrote:
> I will be bidding on these
On Mon, 10 Dec 2018, Guy Dunphy via cctalk wrote:
I hope you get them. Cheaply.
And if so, please let us know if the data was recoverable. I have some quite old
floppies to someday get around to attempting to recover. Really curious to see
whether floppies suffer 'data evaporation' over time or not.
Disks of that time period tend to do well.
Some later disks didn't fare so well, such as Wabash, or Verbatim BEFORE
DATALIFE.
FWIW, years ago a friend of mine found some important
floppies of his had all
developped mold on the magnetic surfaces. Which fouled read heads, making them
useless. We found that slitting open the covers, taking out the disks and
literally washing them in the bathtub with soap and water, drying, then putting
back in the covers, worked!
and sometimes gentle baking can help
(think food dehydrator)
I have encountered a lot of disks that were not stored exceptionally well,
that had developed difficulty turning in the jackets.
Rubbing each edge of the jacket firmly perpendicularly against the edge of
a tabletop, so that the jacket bowed out SLIGHTLY, often helped
substantially. Then you can usually turn the cookie in the jacket with
fingers through the center hole.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com