3 ms·
Absolutely agree. Source: I've read (in the last decade) tons of old floppies from (mostly) the late eighties. The recovery rate for 5.25" DD and HD floppies we
by Tor3 2y ago
Absolutely agree. Source: I've read (in the last decade) tons of old floppies from (mostly) the late eighties. The recovery rate for 5.25" DD and HD floppies were nearly 100%. I had only a couple of floppies with issues (though it must be said that I know people who have had more problems, but that is always about Really Bad Storage Conditions).
But, as I've mentioned before in other threads, this does not translate to 3.5" floppies. Or at least not to HD 3.5" floppies. Even though mine were stored in the same conditions as the 5.25" and 8" floppies, the success rate was really low, and mostly non-existent for "HD" 3.5" floppies (the so-called 1.44MB floppies). The 720KB ones fared much better, but never as good as the older 5.25" ones. Of course that also when the nineties arrived, but more than that - the HD 3.5" floppies stretched the density too high for the medium, according to Chuck(G) and others with more understanding of the physical medium than myself. In any case my experience supports that claim.
So, the title of this thread is "Triple Density Floppy, Anyone?"
Well, obviously I have no belief in the feasibility of trying even higher density than what existed, with the problems already apparent with the existent densities (mind, the 5.25" ones didn't exceed what was possible).
As for other media.. CD-R used to fail reading for me after a year in storage. I quickly stopped using that as any kind of backup. And we all know about flash-based storage.. or at least I hope we all know. They're just like very slowly leaking capacitors. Spinning rust or spinning floppy media or even tape retains data for much longer (yes I have tons of CCTs which are also still readable, from back to the beginning of the eighties)
- shiroiushi 2y agoI used lots of 1.44MB floppies in the early 90s and generally had few, if any problems, as I recall. But later in the decade, I had more and more trouble, and by the late 90s or early 2000s they could absolutely not be relied upon at all. I wonder if you went through all your HD 3.5" floppies, and sorted them by manufacturing date, if you'd find a trend showing the early ones being more reliable than the later ones.
- Tor3 2y agoIt's more like how long it was since they were written - I couldn't find any other pattern (I started reading through old floppies a long time ago). They simply seemed to fade with age.