5 ms·

Anecdotally, I'd estimate 10% of floppy disks I purchased were DOA, and about 0% for SSDs. Would be curious for more rigorous data

rinchik 7y ago
Yep. Floppies were not reliable at all, but cheap, disposable, and very convenient (during those times). My point about SSDs was not about SSD vs floppy, but about SSD vs some other modern tech. e.g. super secure proprietary tape storage.
- omarhaneef 7y ago
  Tape? More reliable than SSD? I thought you said you were old? Jokes aside, the best reliability is probably more redundancy. Take a few SSDs, write the same data over and over (multiple times on each). If more than 50% agree, then its legit. You can increase the reliability by arbitrarily increasing the redundancy in this case.
  - carlmr 7y ago
    >Take a few SSDs, write the same data over and over (multiple times on each). If more than 50% agree, then its legit They may all fail at the same or very similar time if you write the same data to them
  - azernik 7y ago
    Tape is still used for archival purposes, as it has very long shelf life (i.e. longevity when not under heavy usage) and low cost per byte of storage (fancy electronics go into the R/W machine and the library hardware, not the tapes). AWS Glacier (https://aws.amazon.com/glacier/ https://aws.amazon.com/glacier/) was built to replace on-premise tape libraries, and while no one knows exactly what storage medium they use, a tape library is one of the possibilities given the pricing model (cheap storage, expensive retrieval) and retrieval delays (on the order of hours, unless you're willing to pay extra for on the order of minutes). Other possibilities I've heard thrown around include I/O-poor NAS boxes, and a tape-like mechanical library of optical disks.
    - rootusrootus 7y ago
      I recall reading somewhere (pretty sure it was actually here) that Glacier used some sort of custom low-RPM spinning rust that could be spun down when not in use and otherwise took very little power.
      - azernik 7y ago
        No one really knows - there have been leaks saying multiple contradictory things over the years, which leads me to believe they're experimenting with a variety of storage technologies.
Rebelgecko 7y ago
More anecdata, but my experience was that as floppies became less common (around 2000-2005?) the quality control got way worse if you just got a random box of them from Office Max or wherever.
- djohnston 7y ago
  that's interesting, i was purchasing in early 2000's so that lines up
AdrianB1 7y ago
Up to around 1995 I had about 0 defects. Later the quality decreased until around 10-20% defects.
- topspin 7y ago
  That was my experience. I used (and not gently) hundreds of 5.25" floppies in the mid to late 1980s and had very few problems. Wore out drives, but the disks lasted forever. At first 3.25" disks were very good as well; it was normal to install a commercial software product that was distributed on a half dozen or more 3.25" disks that would all work perfectly year after year. Later quality dropped off and floppy media became rather unreliable. I can only imagine how reliable a mil spec 8" drive with mil spec media must be.
  - AdrianB1 7y ago
    The 5.25" disks were much more reliable than the 3.5". I had plenty of bad 3.5" after I used it a lot, but almost no bad 5.25" disk. Not sure if it was related to the areal density, rotational speed, head distance - I've seen scratched 3.5" disks quite often. I still have a 8" disk in my desk's drawer, but I have no reader to check it. It is probably still good more than 25 years after the last time it was written (I have it since ~ 1992).
- tropo 7y ago
  I was about to make this comment with the exact same year. In 1994, the low-end brands went bad. By 1995, all brands were bad. A few years later, the drives started to be bad.
Spooky23 7y ago
That was the late 90s and early 2000s when the manufacturing was off-shored and hired out. I rehabbed my dads old IBM XT a few years ago, 10/10 new in box 5.25” floppy disks were in perfect condition.
- gerbilly 7y ago
  Yup all my Apple ][ floppies are still readable. I formatted them between 1985-1990. Most of the CDROMs I burned in the 2000s are bad, no matter how much I spent on the blanks.

rinchik 7y ago

Yep. Floppies were not reliable at all, but cheap, disposable, and very convenient (during those times). My point about SSDs was not about SSD vs floppy, but about SSD vs some other modern tech. e.g. super secure proprietary tape storage.

omarhaneef 7y ago
Tape? More reliable than SSD? I thought you said you were old? Jokes aside, the best reliability is probably more redundancy. Take a few SSDs, write the same data over and over (multiple times on each). If more than 50% agree, then its legit. You can increase the reliability by arbitrarily increasing the redundancy in this case.
- carlmr 7y ago
  >Take a few SSDs, write the same data over and over (multiple times on each). If more than 50% agree, then its legit They may all fail at the same or very similar time if you write the same data to them
- azernik 7y ago
  Tape is still used for archival purposes, as it has very long shelf life (i.e. longevity when not under heavy usage) and low cost per byte of storage (fancy electronics go into the R/W machine and the library hardware, not the tapes). AWS Glacier (https://aws.amazon.com/glacier/ https://aws.amazon.com/glacier/) was built to replace on-premise tape libraries, and while no one knows exactly what storage medium they use, a tape library is one of the possibilities given the pricing model (cheap storage, expensive retrieval) and retrieval delays (on the order of hours, unless you're willing to pay extra for on the order of minutes). Other possibilities I've heard thrown around include I/O-poor NAS boxes, and a tape-like mechanical library of optical disks.
  - rootusrootus 7y ago
    I recall reading somewhere (pretty sure it was actually here) that Glacier used some sort of custom low-RPM spinning rust that could be spun down when not in use and otherwise took very little power.
    - azernik 7y ago
      No one really knows - there have been leaks saying multiple contradictory things over the years, which leads me to believe they're experimenting with a variety of storage technologies.

Rebelgecko 7y ago

More anecdata, but my experience was that as floppies became less common (around 2000-2005?) the quality control got way worse if you just got a random box of them from Office Max or wherever.

djohnston 7y ago
that's interesting, i was purchasing in early 2000's so that lines up

AdrianB1 7y ago

Up to around 1995 I had about 0 defects. Later the quality decreased until around 10-20% defects.

topspin 7y ago
That was my experience. I used (and not gently) hundreds of 5.25" floppies in the mid to late 1980s and had very few problems. Wore out drives, but the disks lasted forever. At first 3.25" disks were very good as well; it was normal to install a commercial software product that was distributed on a half dozen or more 3.25" disks that would all work perfectly year after year. Later quality dropped off and floppy media became rather unreliable. I can only imagine how reliable a mil spec 8" drive with mil spec media must be.
- AdrianB1 7y ago
  The 5.25" disks were much more reliable than the 3.5". I had plenty of bad 3.5" after I used it a lot, but almost no bad 5.25" disk. Not sure if it was related to the areal density, rotational speed, head distance - I've seen scratched 3.5" disks quite often. I still have a 8" disk in my desk's drawer, but I have no reader to check it. It is probably still good more than 25 years after the last time it was written (I have it since ~ 1992).
tropo 7y ago
I was about to make this comment with the exact same year. In 1994, the low-end brands went bad. By 1995, all brands were bad. A few years later, the drives started to be bad.

Spooky23 7y ago

That was the late 90s and early 2000s when the manufacturing was off-shored and hired out. I rehabbed my dads old IBM XT a few years ago, 10/10 new in box 5.25” floppy disks were in perfect condition.

gerbilly 7y ago
Yup all my Apple ][ floppies are still readable. I formatted them between 1985-1990. Most of the CDROMs I burned in the 2000s are bad, no matter how much I spent on the blanks.