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I remember the various floppies (5.25", 3.5") to be the most unreliable piece of technology I have ever worked with (almost on par with Datassette tapes). Read

• whoopdedo 11y ago
  Having gone through a pile of old floppy disks, I think magnetic media is pretty reliable for long-term storage if treated well. Keep them clean, away from strong magnets, and at moderate temperature and humidity and the data will remain readable for many years. Where it fails is on re-writing. The disks I had that were most likely to be bad after sitting in storage were the ones I had erased multiple times. If I had only written to a disk once or twice then I usually had no problem reading it again.
  • tracker1 11y ago
    rotate it regularly... if you're talking tape drives, re-wind them and always store upright... too much has been lost to poorly storing magnetic and film media. Fortunately digital conversion is pretty damned good and easy enough to back up... if only "The Wonder Years" hadn't downmixed the music and vocals into their master copies... :-(