The plight of the humble floppy disk

[howard schwartz]

In connection with the recent thread regarding backing up files over a series
of CDs:

Lots of even new PCs still contain the humble, simple floppy disk drive -
perhaps selling for $10. american, if you want a new one.

To my horror, I found a remarkable hardware failure rate of floppies, even
from large companies like TDK, made (I think ) after the mid 80's. My ancient
floppies seems to last forever. But a newer ``preformatted'' floppy can be
readable/writable and then an hour later when I go to a friends house, I
find his/her PC can not read the thing. Later, on examination I find scandisk
or some lookalike reporting bad clusters, even at the beginning of the floppy
where the boot information is supposed to go: Result most programs can
not even read enough to scan it for errors.

I would think virus, with the prevalance, if this did not happen on so many
machines, with so many brands of floppies and floppy disk drives (no I am not
migrating a virus!).

I have been told the QA failure rate for floppies can be as high at factories
as 33%. I wonder if drives are also made quickly and badly so the heads can
easily damage the disk?

It seems a shame that a time honored quick portable medium should be produced
so badly, now that its speed and size outdated it. Many were predicting that
zip drives would replace it, but not so far.

 

[k]

In connection with the recent thread regarding backing up files over a series
of CDs:

It seems a shame that a time honored quick portable medium should be produced
so badly, now that its speed and size outdated it. Many were predicting that
zip drives would replace it, but not so far.

good thing too.. bloody zips, they overshadowed superdisks with a mass
marketting campaine

LS-120's and LS-240s (superdisks) also read and wrote floppies DAMNED fast, and
could reformat them to bigger sizes. none of the idiot iomega software needed,
they could be booted from in many bios's too

a shame that technology never succeeded :-/

k

 

[Bob Adkins]

In connection with the recent thread regarding backing up files over a series
of CDs:

Lots of even new PCs still contain the humble, simple floppy disk drive -
perhaps selling for $10. american, if you want a new one.

Floppy failure was often due to poor quality media, defective firmware in
many Toshiba-based drives, and poor case design which allowed dust to be
sucked into the insides of the drive.

Bob

 

[Jack D. Russell, Sr.]

======================================================================
* Reply by Jack D. Russell, Sr. <[email protected]>
* Newsgroup: alt.comp.freeware
* Reply to: All; "howard schwartz" <[email protected]>
* Date: Sun, 8 Aug 2004 11:02:28 -0500 GMT
* Subj: The plight of the humble floppy disk
======================================================================

hs>In connection with the recent thread regarding backing up files
hs>over a series of CDs:

hs>Lots of even new PCs still contain the humble, simple floppy
hs>disk drive -
hs>perhaps selling for $10. american, if you want a new one.

hs>To my horror, I found a remarkable hardware failure rate of
hs>floppies, even from large companies like TDK, made (I think )
hs>after the mid 80's. My ancient floppies seems to last forever.
hs>But a newer ``preformatted'' floppy can be readable/writable
hs>and then an hour later when I go to a friends house, I find
hs>his/her PC can not read the thing. Later, on examination I find
hs>scandisk or some lookalike reporting bad clusters, even at the
hs>beginning of the floppy where the boot information is supposed
hs>to go: Result most programs can not even read enough to scan it
hs>for errors.

hs>I would think virus, with the prevalance, if this did not happen
hs>on so many machines, with so many brands of floppies and floppy
hs>disk drives (no I am not migrating a virus!).

hs>I have been told the QA failure rate for floppies can be as high
hs>at factories as 33%. I wonder if drives are also made quickly
hs>and badly so the heads can easily damage the disk?

hs>It seems a shame that a time honored quick portable medium should
hs>be produced so badly, now that its speed and size outdated it.
hs>Many were predicting that zip drives would replace it, but not
hs>so far.

I noticed the same thing, and started looking for an answer. I found that the main culprit was the current crop of common devices that contain a magnet of some sort. It takes very l
ittle exposure to anything with a magnetic field to corrupt a floppy. Solution..,the best that you can do is to try and ensure that your floppies are never exposed to any of these devices. Hard to do in this day and age of electronic marvels.

 

[Gnasher]

In connection with the recent thread regarding backing up files over a series
of CDs:

I'm not too excited about the quality of floppy disks either!

Some time ago I span-zipped a big internet download across 30 pre-
formatted big-name floppy disks fresh out of the cellophane. 3 floppies
let me down so I reformatted the lot and tried again - result deep joy.
So I do not reckon much to pre-formatted floppy disks.

PS: Yes I have heard of CD-Rs but it was some time ago.

Floppy disks generally do not last me a year of use. When they fail
there is nothing visibly wrong with the magnetic surface. (Fortunately I
am multiply backed-up to hard disk all over the place - so whoever nicked
my computer at work has not inconvenienced me!!!<grrr>) If these floppy
disks are reformatted again they are perfectly good for another six
months.

 

[Frank Delamarre]

In August 2004 one howardbschwartz sighed:

I have been told the QA failure rate for floppies can be as high at factories
as 33%. I wonder if drives are also made quickly and badly so the heads can
easily damage the disk?

It seems a shame that a time honored quick portable medium should be produced
so badly, now that its speed and size outdated it. Many were predicting that
zip drives would replace it, but not so far.

Disks and drives also got cheaper and cheaper over the years as
production shifted to low wage countries and then to places where pay
and working conditions are even worse and quality control is almost
absent apparently. Thus names on products became meaningless names.
They are no longer real brand names and guarantees for a certain
quality.

Incidentally I noticed the same as you, and now use other media to
transport data.

Frank

 

[Bob Adkins]

ittle exposure to anything with a magnetic field to corrupt a floppy.

I used to believe that myself, but it's largely a myth.

I took a couple of disks, exposed them to brutally strong magnets. Nothing.
I exposed them to a choke coil field, which is pretty strong and has a 60 Hz
alternating field. Couldn't destroy the data!

I suppose they can be ruined with a magnetic field, but it isn't easy. Yet,
they are very fragile. I think time is their worst enemy. Over half of my
old collection can no longer be used.

Bob

 

[Phred]

hs>To my horror, I found a remarkable hardware failure rate of
hs>floppies, even from large companies like TDK, made (I think )
hs>after the mid 80's. My ancient floppies seems to last forever.
hs>But a newer ``preformatted'' floppy can be readable/writable
hs>and then an hour later when I go to a friends house, I find
hs>his/her PC can not read the thing. Later, on examination I find
hs>scandisk or some lookalike reporting bad clusters, even at the
hs>beginning of the floppy where the boot information is supposed
hs>to go: Result most programs can not even read enough to scan it
hs>for errors.

[...]

Even back in the good old days there were commonly problems moving
floppies from system to system. Many times one had to walk an
incoming floppy around the office until finally finding a machine that
could read it. (Though in the mid/late 80s I guess this was mainly
with 5.25" 360K disks around here.

I suspect a lot of the problem was in the tolerances for the
read/write heads. A disk written on a machine at the edge in one
direction tended to be unreadable in a machine at the other extreme.

Presumably, the same sort of problem could arise with pre-formatted
disks?

As for "new" reliability, I typically found about 5 to 10% "bad" out
of the box when formatting the things years ago (now talking 3.5"
720K) and haven't really noticed much better or worse with the
"modern" pre-formatted 1.44MB units here.

Cheers, Phred.

 

[DalienX]

hs>To my horror, I found a remarkable hardware failure rate of
hs>floppies, even from large companies like TDK, made (I think )
hs>after the mid 80's. My ancient floppies seems to last forever.
hs>But a newer ``preformatted'' floppy can be readable/writable
hs>and then an hour later when I go to a friends house, I find
hs>his/her PC can not read the thing. Later, on examination I find
hs>scandisk or some lookalike reporting bad clusters, even at the
hs>beginning of the floppy where the boot information is supposed
hs>to go: Result most programs can not even read enough to scan it
hs>for errors.

[...]

Even back in the good old days there were commonly problems moving
floppies from system to system. Many times one had to walk an
incoming floppy around the office until finally finding a machine
that could read it. (Though in the mid/late 80s I guess this was
mainly with 5.25" 360K disks around here.

I suspect a lot of the problem was in the tolerances for the
read/write heads. A disk written on a machine at the edge in one
direction tended to be unreadable in a machine at the other extreme.

Presumably, the same sort of problem could arise with pre-formatted
disks?

As for "new" reliability, I typically found about 5 to 10% "bad" out
of the box when formatting the things years ago (now talking 3.5"
720K) and haven't really noticed much better or worse with the
"modern" pre-formatted 1.44MB units here.

Cheers, Phred.

The floppy is dead.
Recently i seen a pack of 10 TDK floppys on the shelf for $12, right
next to them was a pack of of 50 TDK CDR's for $35. Do the math 0_o

 

[fitwell]

hs>To my horror, I found a remarkable hardware failure rate of
hs>floppies, even from large companies like TDK, made (I think )
hs>after the mid 80's. My ancient floppies seems to last forever.
hs>But a newer ``preformatted'' floppy can be readable/writable
hs>and then an hour later when I go to a friends house, I find
hs>his/her PC can not read the thing. Later, on examination I find
hs>scandisk or some lookalike reporting bad clusters, even at the
hs>beginning of the floppy where the boot information is supposed
hs>to go: Result most programs can not even read enough to scan it
hs>for errors.

[...]

Even back in the good old days there were commonly problems moving
floppies from system to system. Many times one had to walk an
incoming floppy around the office until finally finding a machine that
could read it. (Though in the mid/late 80s I guess this was mainly
with 5.25" 360K disks around here.

I suspect a lot of the problem was in the tolerances for the
read/write heads. A disk written on a machine at the edge in one
direction tended to be unreadable in a machine at the other extreme.

Presumably, the same sort of problem could arise with pre-formatted
disks?

As for "new" reliability, I typically found about 5 to 10% "bad" out
of the box when formatting the things years ago (now talking 3.5"
720K) and haven't really noticed much better or worse with the
"modern" pre-formatted 1.44MB units here.

Cheers, Phred.

I do contract work so I have a plastic box of floppies that I've been
carrying around from machine to machine _literally_ for years. They
contain all my toolbars, templates, special files and my resumé, etc.
I've never had one problem with any of these floppies in all these
years <knock on wood D>. But I believe the clue is in this message,
I never, not once have used a floppy without formatting it myself,
whether or not it's pre-formatted. It takes so little time.

And I have new floppies in that collection that are also still working
along with the old ones. Those old ones are probably 5-8 years old
now (if not more some of them). Yet all are still working.

I think that must be the trick, to format oneself. I tend to be
cautious in that way. I never have trusted that pre-formatting thing.
Now I consciously know it, will trust it even less. <g>

Good luck.

 

[Daniel Mandic]

The floppy is dead.
Recently i seen a pack of 10 TDK floppys on the shelf for $12, right
next to them was a pack of of 50 TDK CDR's for $35. Do the math 0_o

Right?

 

[Chris McDonald]

The floppy is dead.
Recently i seen a pack of 10 TDK floppys on the shelf for $12, right
next to them was a pack of of 50 TDK CDR's for $35. Do the math 0_o

Recently a 1930's Bentley sold at auction for a record near AUD$7M.
There was a picture of it in the newspaper, right next to an advert
for a brand new Kia Rio. Do the math.

Chris.

 

[Ken Taylor]

Recently a 1930's Bentley sold at auction for a record near AUD$7M.
There was a picture of it in the newspaper, right next to an advert
for a brand new Kia Rio. Do the math.

Chris.

Recently a house sold for NZ$7M. There was a picture of it next to a man
with both a floppy disc and a Bentley. Do the math.

Ken

 

[Hunter1]

Recently a 1930's Bentley sold at auction for a record near AUD$7M.
There was a picture of it in the newspaper, right next to an advert
for a brand new Kia Rio. Do the math.

Chris.

The floppy truly is dead, the last time I had to use a
floppy was when we could not get this old beast to boot from
CD no matter what we did, and the old beast unfortunately
had some important data on it that we needed to ghost. (The
other alternative was to move the HDD to another PC, but the
floppy was easier)

It's a legacy tool, not much else. Memory sticks and CD's
have replaced it with a vengeance.

 

[jo]

The floppy truly is dead, the last time I had to use a
floppy was when we could not get this old beast to boot from
CD no matter what we did, and the old beast unfortunately
had some important data on it that we needed to ghost. (The
other alternative was to move the HDD to another PC, but the
floppy was easier)

Last time I used one was a couple of hours ago to move a text file
from the laptop to the main puter...

 

[Richard Rudek]

[snip]

The floppy truly is dead, the last time I had to use a
floppy was when we could not get this old beast to boot from
CD no matter what we did, and the old beast unfortunately
had some important data on it that we needed to ghost. (The
other alternative was to move the HDD to another PC, but the
floppy was easier)

It's a legacy tool, not much else. Memory sticks and CD's
have replaced it with a vengeance.

So you guys don't use any of that new fangled hardware, that upon
installing or repairing Windows XP, you have press the F6 key and load
the drivers from A: ? ... ;\

Happened last Friday, Adaptec SCSI RAID 320, mirrored. Went through two
disks until I found a good one. PITA.

______________________________________________________
Richard Rudek. MicroDek, Chatswood, Sydney, Australia.
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

 

[Richard Steven Hack]

The floppy is dead.

Well, yes, if you are talking about the economics. But there are
still uses for floppies - booting a machine that can't boot from CD or
HD, for one. Techies always carry floppies around - even though most
of the time now we use bootable CD's for most work, there are still
some clients you can't do that with. Fortunately for us, if a machine
doesn't have a CD drive (like some old laptops people buy second-hand
and then try to make work like a desktop - I've had two clients like
that in recent months) or a floppy drive, they probably have the
other. So boot diskettes and boot CDs complement each other.

Another reason floppies may fail, too, is if the drive rotation speed
slips. I remember in the "old days" (TRS-80's anyone?) that you had
to have "calibration disks" and a trimpot tool to constantly tweak the
drives so they would spin at the correct speed.

 

[Richard Steven Hack]

Incidentally I noticed the same as you, and now use other media to
transport data.

Once they get the cost of those USB key drives down slightly more on
the 512MB and 1GB size, they'll be perfect for transporting data.

With 512MB, you can install a small Linux and still have 400MB of
space available. With 1GB, you can damn near install a full Linux and
still have space available. You could install a 64MB Linux and have
more than the space of a CDR available.

Reusable, too, easier than a CD/RW.

 

[Chaos Master]

Hey DalienX ([email protected])! You wrote in message
<[email protected]>, at group alt.comp.freeware,

The floppy is dead.
Recently i seen a pack of 10 TDK floppys on the shelf for $12, right
next to them was a pack of of 50 TDK CDR's for $35. Do the math 0_o

Would you burn a CD to transfer, say, 500kb of data between 2 PC's?

[]s

 

[Hunter1]

Hunter1 wrote:




Last time I used one was a couple of hours ago to move a text file
from the laptop to the main puter...

Prefer to use a memory stick myself, much easier, much more
convenient, carries 512 meg, faster, and always on my keychain.