Are My Floppy disks rusting away <g> ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Al Dykes
  • Start date Start date
A

Al Dykes

About the only thing I use floppies for these days is to run software
that the vendor's brain dead scripts require to run from A:.

These are freqyently boot images and I always do a full format on the
floppy to check for bad spots. Is seems to me that it's getting harder
and harder to find a floppy that's clean.

I also suspect that if the floppy drives are not used
once in awhile they might not work well.

Does anyone agree, of have any hard information ?
 
About the only thing I use floppies for these days is to run software
that the vendor's brain dead scripts require to run from A:.

These are freqyently boot images and I always do a full format on the
floppy to check for bad spots. Is seems to me that it's getting harder
and harder to find a floppy that's clean.

I also suspect that if the floppy drives are not used
once in awhile they might not work well.

Does anyone agree, of have any hard information ?
Click to expand...

I went through a cache of 3.5" floppy disks that hadn't been touched
for almost 2 years only to find the old disk drive I have wouldn't
spin up. Replaced it and found nearly hald of the disks were
corrupted or partially corrupted. I was able to salvage the important
stuff (which was 3 or 4 disks altogether) and they are now rusting
away in the basement of my parent's house.

I did find it funny the 3.5" didn't last as long as 5.25" did even
though both were in the same storeage, the pile of C64 disks I have
(over 200) all but one worked fine.
 
from a dos prompt:

subst a: c:\floppy

No slow floppy disk required, just copy stuff to the c:\floppy directory
first,
then run the program.
 
About the only thing I use floppies for these days is to run software
that the vendor's brain dead scripts require to run from A:.

These are freqyently boot images and I always do a full format on the
floppy to check for bad spots. Is seems to me that it's getting harder
and harder to find a floppy that's clean.
Click to expand...

I suppose you format under Windows or from a Windows dropped DOS box. Try
instead running FORMAT A: /U (unconditional format) from true DOS. This would
only be possible under Windows 9x, where you can boot to true DOS.

You'll notice that the percentage of good floppies will increase when formatted
under true DOS.
I also suspect that if the floppy drives are not used
once in awhile they might not work well.
Click to expand...

The problem isn't the drive but the floppy quality and its storage conditions.

Regards, Zvi
 
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