The plight of the humble floppy disk

[Hunter1]

[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.

Actually you got me on that one, couple of times setting up
servers we've needed to use the old floppy drive to install
the drivers for the SCSI controllers etc.

 

[DalienX]

Chaos Master wrote:

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

[]s

Yes i would, you can leave the disk open and add more to it later, and
regardless of wasted space a cd is cheaper and more reliable than a
floppy.

 

[VH]

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: ? ... ;\

Now that XP SP2 has been released, it is a good time to learn about
slipstream. MSFN.org is a good place to start with helpful members in
the forums. You can then add drivers needed for the boot devices to
the install CD.

My old Dell 8250 does not even came with a floppy and my new Dell
PE400SC came with a floppy drive which I planned to remove it since
the case got limited space for drives.

 

[fitwell]

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

Yes, but you have to have the money for the stick itself and some sort
of connection (or extra one) on your pc. Floppies are still the way
to go for most systems.

If you have a memory stick, lucky you. The way of the future and
eventually we'll all come on board, but for now, floppies work just
great in the workforce. I do contract work, and offices are still
stuck on Win95 to 2000 with floppy drives. Only recently have CD-ROM
drives become accessible and, even then, not a given.

Good luck everyone.

 

[fitwell]

Yes, but you have to have the money for the stick itself and some sort
of connection (or extra one) on your pc. Floppies are still the way
to go for most systems.

If you have a memory stick, lucky you. The way of the future and
eventually we'll all come on board, but for now, floppies work just
great in the workforce. I do contract work, and offices are still
stuck on Win95 to 2000 with floppy drives. Only recently have CD-ROM
drives become accessible and, even then, not a given.

Good luck everyone.

Again, I'm speaking as a user and what is practical. You guys are
techies and run into different situations. I go with what is needed
and what works; pressures of the field, as it were. I'm lucky if I
don't get the oldest machine available whenever I'm sent on a
contract. Often no frills at all. Last job, I was on a machine with
no sound, 64 RAM, 1.6 gigs hdd space, no working CD-ROM drive. I had
to install sw on it, too, from their available resources as not even
Acrobat Reader were installed. And it was the machine the EA's
support had been using for years! My reality, vs. a techies'. <g> So
my floppies still the way to go.

 

[Ernest]

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 mains cause of dead floppies are terminally
ill floppy drives, with usage the heads get out
of alignment and they read floppies from drives
which are in alignment as being faulty. You used
to be able to get special floppies that you used
to re-align the heads but they have gone the
way of the dinosaur. To tranfer data you are
better to use a CD (burn it and read in the other)
or a USB drive, both carry more data.

Deadly Ernest

@bywater.net.au

(my new keyboard, with small keys,
accepts full responsibility for all
typographical and spelling errors)

 

[Phred]

Again, I'm speaking as a user and what is practical. You guys are
techies and run into different situations. I go with what is needed
and what works; pressures of the field, as it were. I'm lucky if I
don't get the oldest machine available whenever I'm sent on a
contract. Often no frills at all. Last job, I was on a machine with
no sound, 64 RAM, 1.6 gigs hdd space, no working CD-ROM drive. I had

Sounds like my work machine...

to install sw on it, too, from their available resources as not even
Acrobat Reader were installed. And it was the machine the EA's

Nope. Mine has Acrobat Reader. Must be the bloke in the next lab.

support had been using for years! My reality, vs. a techies'. <g> So
my floppies still the way to go.

Cheers, Phred.

 

[Box134]

Did the same thing. I have them networked, except they must both be on, so
putting it a floppy was the easiest thing.

In addition, a floppy drive is still needed for an emergency boot IMHO. Many
OSes and imaging programs use "rescue" diskettes to get running. There's a
"boot and nuke" freeware program for wiping a HD that runs off a floppy.
Nice for clearing out a computer before selling it, or killing off an ailing
OS.

A floppy drive is so cheap and useful I can't see doing without it.

 

[fitwell]

Sounds like my work machine...


Nope. Mine has Acrobat Reader. Must be the bloke in the next lab.



Cheers, Phred.

<lol>

 

[Hunter1]

Now that XP SP2 has been released, it is a good time to learn about
slipstream. MSFN.org is a good place to start with helpful members in
the forums. You can then add drivers needed for the boot devices to
the install CD.

My old Dell 8250 does not even came with a floppy and my new Dell
PE400SC came with a floppy drive which I planned to remove it since
the case got limited space for drives.

Slipstreaming is the way to go, but we've only gone as far
as 1a. Still deciding what to do about 2, think we be doing
some trialling first and try to work out how many dollars
worth of "legacy" apps are going to stop working, and it
aint just the cost of the software itself that counts
towards that. Hopefully it's all scare-mongering, but MS
themselves say it's going to break a few things.

 

[MsOsWin]

i havne't bought floppies for maybe 5 years.

i've had few failures. i've used varouis braands ('no name', ibm, sony..
other brand names, probaly made by same mfr) for pc to pc transfers. many
many times. only a few have lost clusters.

 

[Richard Rudek]

Now that XP SP2 has been released, it is a good time to learn about
slipstream. MSFN.org is a good place to start with helpful members in
the forums. You can then add drivers needed for the boot devices to
the install CD.

Yes, I do slip-stream. But I wasn't aware you could slip-stream
third-party drivers. I'll look into it later, along with doing the same
for the BartPE CD's.

However, in this case, I was pulled aside by a new sub-leasee of the
client, as I walked in the door - socially engineered into installing
some trojan spyware protector, then they attempted fix their problems by
deleting "infected" files from the System32 folder. So, no preparation,
and too much hassle to comandeer resources from one of the users (of the
other business).

Although, it had one of those bloody Microsoft Multimedia USB keyboards,
where the function keys (F6, etc) are a sub-function, and you have to
continually toggle the function lock key. It's annoying how, in some
places, it will quickly exit the install/repair, and you have to restart
from stratch. Function lock, F6 key, ... PMO !

My old Dell 8250 does not even came with a floppy and my new Dell
PE400SC came with a floppy drive which I planned to remove it since
the case got limited space for drives.

You know the axiom. You don't what you've got, 'till it's gone...


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

 

[Richard Rudek]

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.

Yes, I still have the (expensive) alignment disks for 5.25" and 3.5"
drives. However, it have to dig out the old 286 retrofitted testbed in
order to run the alignment programs. Has trouble even on a 386-40.

Dunno.



The mains cause of dead floppies are terminally
ill floppy drives, with usage the heads get out
of alignment and they read floppies from drives
which are in alignment as being faulty. You used
to be able to get special floppies that you used
to re-align the heads but they have gone the
way of the dinosaur. To tranfer data you are
better to use a CD (burn it and read in the other)
or a USB drive, both carry more data.

Hmm, I beg to differ.

Most of the systems that give me trouble, are the ones that DON'T use
their floppies much. I suspect that with modern systems, the larger
amount of airflow tends to deposit gunge on the internals of the drive.
Heads, tracks, optical sensors, etc. And not just lightly, in many
cases.

I carry around head cleaning disks, but more often than not, it's only
about 50% successful of those that fail. If your patient, it might get
better through further use, but if the gunge is of anything that is
physically significant, it may well lead to alignment problems.

It's been I long time I could justify fully servicing and aligning a
floppy disk drive. But it's easy enough to pull the cover off to take a
look at the gunge, though.


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

 

[Chaos Master]

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

Chaos Master wrote:

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

[]s

Yes i would, you can leave the disk open and add more to it later, and
regardless of wasted space a cd is cheaper and more reliable than a
floppy.

A floppy here in Brazil is cheaper than a *GOOD* CD (not those cheap brands).
Since I like to use only good media for my recordings.

And in some computers (like at work), the PC's don't have CD drives at all (to
make installing software harder), nor we can download documents from Internet.

[]s

 

[Ardent]

X-No-Archive: yes

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.

Even when I go to my next door friend to help him out I take at least
three floppies with the same set of programs/data. Usually I am able
to get at least one that worked :0)

IMHO floppies are not made by big name companies - they just get the
lot in their names. And no brand floppies were available at half the
price and worked as well or as bad :-(

 

[Chaos Master]

Ardent's info is within the message

Even when I go to my next door friend to help him out I take at least
three floppies with the same set of programs/data. Usually I am able
to get at least one that worked :0)

IMHO floppies are not made by big name companies - they just get the
lot in their names. And no brand floppies were available at half the
price and worked as well or as bad :-(

I have floppies that I bought in 2001 and are still working. But recently, I
opened a fresh new box of floppies, to find that one of them was bad, and one
of the floppies created bad sectors.

The one-floppy Linux that I had done on this disk, didn't work (couldn't load
stuff).


[]s

 

[default]

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.

Very interesting. And I thought it was just me and my local storage
conditions . . .

Did some serious analysis and experimentation and concluded that the
cause of my failures was mildew (mold growing on the surface of the
floppy media). The media of most floppy drives supports it and it
only has to see a high humidity once to become suspect, or reasonable
humidity over a long period. In rare instances it is visible on the
surface and sometimes the floppy can be taken apart and cleaned (But
that is difficult to pull off without killing it)

VCR and audio tape media also are also affected, but only at the edges
where they are exposed to atmosphere.

With floppies the mildew is transferred to the heads on the drive and
can, in severe cases, cause the drive to fail. Cleaning the head with
a floppy cleaner will often restore it.

The floppies I store in hermetic containers, away from heat and light,
and packed with desiccant seem to survive indefinitely
I think it was TDK, some time ago, that offered and archival quality
floppy that was supposed to be resistant to mildew.

 

[Phred]

Very interesting. And I thought it was just me and my local storage
conditions . . .

Did some serious analysis and experimentation and concluded that the
cause of my failures was mildew (mold growing on the surface of the
floppy media). The media of most floppy drives supports it and it
only has to see a high humidity once to become suspect, or reasonable
humidity over a long period. In rare instances it is visible on the
surface and sometimes the floppy can be taken apart and cleaned (But
that is difficult to pull off without killing it)

Yeah. Three months in unairconditioned household storage in the wet
tropics along the coast around here is more that enough to kill
floppies due to fungal growth. On the other hand, in the dry
tropics 20 km inland, floppies will last at least twelve years in
airconditioned storage (12 hour/day Mon-Fri), in my experience.

VCR and audio tape media also are also affected, but only at the edges
where they are exposed to atmosphere.

Still bad enough to kill the recording down on the coast around here;
and consequently the drive when an attempt is made to play the moldy
tape.

With floppies the mildew is transferred to the heads on the drive and
can, in severe cases, cause the drive to fail. Cleaning the head with
a floppy cleaner will often restore it.

Perhaps too optimistic. Let's say "may restore it"?

The floppies I store in hermetic containers, away from heat and light,
and packed with desiccant seem to survive indefinitely
I think it was TDK, some time ago, that offered and archival quality
floppy that was supposed to be resistant to mildew.

Here, it was 3M that offered floppies with a fungicidal treatment.
Maybe TDK did too; but, if so, it didn't make it up this way AFAIK.


Cheers, Phred.