Modern floppy disk question...

[Jules Richardson]

On Wed, 2005-05-04 at 08:31 -0500, JP Hindin wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 4 May 2005, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
> > On Wed, 4 May 2005, Jules Richardson wrote:
> > > Anyone know why modern floppy disks are such total junk? They seem to
> > > often develop problems after only one or two writes - whereas back in
> > > the day they were always pretty reliable.
> > 
> > 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.
> 
> I've always put this down to the vast increase of track density on the
> media. Of course, I could be full of fluff, but it would certainly explain
> why I can read my 30 year old 8" floppies (Which I could almost use a
> microscope to pick out the 0s and 1s) and why 1.44MB (or
> greater?) 3.5" disks are such a disappointment.

Sorry, should have been clearer - I mean for the same type of media. 

i.e. 3.5 HD floppies from ten years ago seem to be consistently *way*
better than brand-new branded 3.5" media. I can't believe there was a
change in the equipment because typically the same manufacturers who
used to make floppies still do, so presumably it's a quality issue.

I've just been going through some floppies bought within the last two
years (mainly Sony, but not likely to be from the same batch) - I've
pulled apart the failures and they all seem to have discolouration or
streaks / smears on the surfaces. 

In other words, it's not a density issue (i.e. higher density media is
more prone to failure - although of course that holds true too) - more
of a quality / fabrication issue. What I don't understand is how the
"decent" manufaturers did a good job for so many years and then started
churning out junk; it's not like 50 years passed and the knowledge of
how to make a floppy disk got lost or anything!)

cheers

Jules