Now hard drives too. Re: Modern floppy disk question...

[Joe R.]

At 08:31 AM 5/4/05 -0500, you 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.
>
>I also apply this logic to why the latest 300GB Maxtor disk lasts six to
>eight months before dying, as opposed to any number of <100MB disks that
>cannot be killed. This, however, might be a false excuse - but I like to
>use it anyway. (Of course, sometimes I prefer to just say Maxtor's suck
>and dream of the day I can afford an all SCSI disk system)

   It's not just high density. The newest maxtors DO suck! So do the latest
Seagates. For the ones of you that didn't know it, Glen Goodwin operates a
computer repair shop and has had LOTS of experience with this. I talked to
him about this and he recommended buying an IBM drive made by Fujitsu. I
bought one and have had NO trouble with it (knock on wood!). All of the
Seagates and Maxtors that I've tried in the last few years have failed
within six months.

    Joe