4 May
2005
4 May
'05
9:53 a.m.
Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
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.
Once you do find one, hang on to it. They're
becoming as precious as
gold.
ebay auctions are good for lots of 100 or more 3.5" disks for $15 or so...
they're old disks, so the quality is probably better, and you can format them
all and ditch the ones that have errors. Works for me.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/