29 Sep
2006
29 Sep
'06
12:20 p.m.
Subject: Re: FW: Third round of Diskette Experiments completed (results)
From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2006 15:54:51 +0000
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>
Allison wrote:
Actually I was talkkking about 8 and 5,25 media I was trying to recover
data from.
Generally floppies do not like any abrasive
damage, holes, some solvents
and of course magnetic fields. Other than that it's amazing what
will survive.
.... unless it's a 3.5" floppy made in the last 6 or so years, then you just
need to *look* at them funny and they fail :) Actually, typically I find the failure rate to be about
2/3 - I don't think I
can think of a single other product that reaches the consumer with such a high
rating.
Jules,
The last time I'd seens that failure rate I started checking the drives.
It seeems the drives had so much dust (at work) they were scraping the
media to failure. Cleaned the drives and the problem would go away
for a few months. The media was a the cheapest 3.5 available. What
would happen is once the heads built up a mixute of media and dust
it would routinely destroy disks after one use after that. Outside
of that and outright bad drives I found 3.5" to be very reliable and
somewhat more immune to some of the things that kill soft jacket disks.
In fact when AOL was sending their virus out on 3.5" floppies (pre bloat)
I'd use them and still have a few that see regular use. I figure they are
as cheap as they come!
Allison
29 Sep
29 Sep
1:37 p.m.
On Friday 29 September 2006 03:20 pm, Allison wrote:
In fact when AOL was sending their virus out on
3.5" floppies (pre bloat)
I'd use them and still have a few that see regular use. I figure they are
as cheap as they come!
Yah. I have a major pile of those here, and they don't seem to be any more
problematic than any others in the pile of blanks. In fact, the ones that
I'm seeing that have failed are those marked "Memorex" that I paid too darn
much for back when.
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
2:19 p.m.
Roy J. Tellason wrote:
I'm seeing that have failed are those marked
"Memorex" that I paid too darn
much for back when.
Seconded. I think that every single Memorex floppy disk and cassette
tape I've ever used has gone bad (sometimes spectacularly). Hey, I'm
susceptible to marketing campaigns too...
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
3:37 p.m.
Allison wrote:
It's pretty rare that I see problems with 5.25" stuff, providing it's
cleaned.
I'm tempted to say that Parrot disks are the worst, but it's not something
I've thought about too much.
Oh, I keep the drives clean that I use regularly. Actually, I'd second the
point that someone else made - it's not that the disks are DOA, but more a
case that they only survive a handful of uses before failing. Makes me wonder
if there are in fact quality control checks in place, but that they only take
into account number of disks with initial faults - not what happens to them
with any kind of repeated use.
I've only ever seen this problem on 3.5" media from the last few years. Older
HD / DD disks I've rarely had a problem with (i.e. I can grab a used 'old'
disk from the pile and happily use and trust it in any of my drives; the same
just isn't true of new media).
I can't comment on the longevity of the modern stuff, I'm afraid - these days
I don't keep data around on floppy for any length of time. About the only
disks I *keep* data on are a couple of old Gateway 2000 DOS boot disks
(they're handy because they have an expanded copy of fdisk on there, and a
whole range of CDROM drivers)- when they die I'll restore from backups as/when
needed, but for the moment they're still going strong. Those date from circa
1999 though, so from before the days when 3.5" media became junk.
--
A. Because it destroys the natural flow of conversation.
Q. What's wrong with top posting ?
Subject: Re:
FW: Third round of Diskette Experiments completed (results)
From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2006 15:54:51 +0000
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>
.... unless it's a 3.5" floppy made in the last 6 or so years, then you just
need to *look* at them funny and they fail :)
Actually I was talkkking about 8 and 5,25 media I was trying to recover
data from. Actually,
typically I find the failure rate to be about 2/3 - I don't think I
can think of a single other product that reaches the consumer with such a high
rating.
The last time I'd seens that failure rate I started checking the drives.
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3 comments
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participants (4)
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ajp166＠bellatlantic.net -
julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk -
rtellason＠verizon.net -
trixter＠oldskool.org