Modern floppy disk question...

[Jim Leonard]

Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
> 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.

Two words:  Track density.  Old 5.25" disks spread (in the case of IBM PC-land) 
180KB per side of 5.25" surface area... later disks crammed four times as much 
in roughly half the surface area.  I have had exactly one 5.25" disk go bad in 
storage in the last 25 years, but my 3.5" disks haven't been as lucky.

> Once you do find one, hang on to it.  They're becoming as precious as
> gold.

ebay auctions are good for lots of 100 or more 3.5" disks for $15 or so... 
they're old disks, so the quality is probably better, and you can format them 
all and ditch the ones that have errors.  Works for me.
-- 
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org)                    http://www.oldskool.org/
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