Is there any reason to have a 1.2MB 5 1/4" Drive in a modern machine.

[Lutiana]

I have been thinking that I never use HD (1.2Mb) 5.25" disks since most of the machines out there that support 1.2Mb 5.25" drives can probably also use a 1.44Mb 3.5" drive, so why bother?

This thinking enables me to have a "tweener" machine with a 1.44mb and a 360kb drive in it, and I can then make disks for all my machines (the really old ones and the newer ones).

I was wondering what other people's take on this is?

 

[JDT]

I have a single machine with a network connection, running 95 or 98, a 1.2mb & 360k disk. I keep disk images on it for my older machines. I think I use winimage. Thats the only reason for living for this machine.

 

[glitch]

I leave a 1.2 MB drive in my disk imaging machine, along with a 3.5" 1.44 MB drive. The imaging machine mostly /reads/ floppies, so it's more important that it be able to read 1.2 MB disks than write 5.25" DSDD disks. I do sometimes need to write out 1.2 MB disks for the IBM AT (which /can/ support a 3.5" floppy, but doesn't currently have one installed), but not very often. I'd imagine 5.25" DSHD disks will become more important to me when I convert a few of my machines with 8" drives to use them (Cromemco Z-2D, OSI Challenger III, NEC APC).

If you don't use 1.2 MB disks, don't bother! Of course, if you put both DSDD and DSHD 5.25" drives in the machine, you can use a parallel port or USB port floppy drive, as long as the OS you're using supports that.

 

[Chuck(G)]

Yes, if you intend to read disks made by other people!

A 360K floppy made or modified using a 1.2M drive is readable only on another 96 tpi drive.
A 720K 5¼" floppy is readable only on another 96 tpi drive. Since I use floppy drives mostly for reading and not writing, there's no point to having a 360K drive on a machine.

But then, I've also got 100 tpi drives, 3" drives, 2.8" drives, 3¼" drives, 8" drives....

 

[MikeS]

Depends on the machine's BIOS and the OS; 360K drives are not always supported since they are a little different from the other three, so you may have to use a 1.2M HD drive for reading & writing DD disks. And of course an HD drive can read both DD and HD in case you ever do have to read an HD disk.

I prefer to use HD drives myself.

 

[njroadfan]

Yes, if you intend to read disks made by other people!

A 360K floppy made or modified using a 1.2M drive is readable only on another 96 tpi drive.
A 720K 5¼" floppy is readable only on another 96 tpi drive. Since I use floppy drives mostly for reading and not writing, there's no point to having a 360K drive on a machine.

But then, I've also got 100 tpi drives, 3" drives, 2.8" drives, 3¼" drives, 8" drives....

Meanwhile, the whole tpi thing is why I kept an older DD drive around.

 

[MikeS]

Meanwhile, the whole tpi thing is why I kept an older DD drive around.

No reason why not. But as Chuck points out, no reason why either, since the 1.2M drive will read and (as long as you don't mix formats on the same diskette) write both 48TPI (360K) and 96TPI (720K) DD diskettes as well as 96TPI (1.2M) HD diskettes.

No standard drive and certainly not any PC drives will handle 100TPI, and even if you did connect one there's not much PC software that would read it.

But if all you're going to be dealing with is your own or factory-formatted 360K diskettes then a 360K drive is indeed all you nedd.

 

[Lutiana]

I guess there are 2 ways of looking at this:

1. Capacity and
2. Comparability

Yes a 96TPI drive will write at 48TPI, but in my experience that then renders the disk un-readle to true 46TPI drives which in my case would be an issue since thats all I have as an option in the older machines.

From a capacity standpoint any machine that can use the 1.2Mb drive can almost certainly also use the 1.44mb drive and I for one won't sneer at an extra 240kb per disk, plus using a 1.44mb drive means I can get data to legacy machines from my modern Windows 7 machine using a USB drive.

So ultimatly (for me at any rate) having 360k and 1.44mb drives in my 486 is far more useful than a switching either for a 1.2Mb drive especially considering my collection thus far.

 

[MikeS]

So ultimatly (for me at any rate) having 360k and 1.44mb drives in my 486 is far more useful than a switching either for a 1.2Mb drive especially considering my collection thus far.

Absolutely. Like I said, if all the 5.25 disks you deal with are 360K DD then a 360K drive is the way to go; my PoV is different since I read & write as many or more 1.2M disks and I only use DD drives in PCs, XTs, and non-PC systems.

But also like I said, as long as you don't mix the formats (i.e. write to the same disk with both drives without bulk-erasing) there really is no problem reading either one in either drive.

 

[Tetrium2]

I haven't used a 5 1/4 floppy drive in years, but I still have a 3 1/2 2.88MB floppy drive in my offline database (and yes, it gets used now and again ) and even made sure my current rig has a floppydrive controller, if I ever were to want to install a 2.88MB drive.

I still have a couple 5 1/4 drives I pulled out of dumped systems a couple years ago though, and a small bunch of the disks as well.

 

[vwestlife]

Yes, if you intend to read disks made by other people!

A 360K floppy made or modified using a 1.2M drive is readable only on another 96 tpi drive.

As long as you hit the floppy with a bulk tape eraser first, then you can format and write to a 360KB floppy in a 1.2MB drive and it will be perfectly readable in any 360KB-only drive. It's only when you "cross-contaminate" a floppy by overwriting any wider tracks written by a 360KB drive with the narrower tracks written by a 1.2MB drive that you start to have problems reading the floppy in a 360KB drive again. And the newer half-height 360KB drives seem to be less sensitive to this than the older full-height drives, too.

 

[Chuck(G)]

Yes, I remember writing about that over 20 years ago--at the time, the optimum tool was the Radio Shack VHS tape bulk eraser. Strong enough that you can actually feel a 5¼" floppy vibrate when you use it. It was fairly inexpensive too--about $20.

You can even degauss DSHD 5¼ floppies and format and use them as DSDD--and they'll work most of the time.

But the problem is that when handling other people's floppies you don't know what you're going to get. Those floppies formatted on a 5160, but later used and updated on a 5170 with an HD drive is a very typical scenario. The customer doesn't know that there's anything wrong--the floppy worked on his 5160 and then on his 5170, as long as he didn't go back to the 5160.

So, when doing data recovery, I prefer the HD drive--it's also less sensitive to alignment issues created by older 48 tpi drives and skirts the issue of a 48 tpi disk modified in a 96 tpi drive. On the other hand, a 48 tpi drive is useful when trying to recover a bad area--often, there's enough signal present to return useful data where the 96 tpi drive can't quite cut the mustard.

 

[NeXT]

The biggest problem I have found with systems made int he last half decade or so is that they come with a dual drive controller and ten either only program the BIOS to see only one or they don't place the necessary traces for the controller to handle a second drive. My current system can ahndle any type of floppy from 360k to 2.88mb but can only use one of the two drives in my system without a cable swap and a reboot.

 

[Ole Juul]

Yes, if you intend to read disks made by other people!

Exactly, how else are you going to read all those old disks? I have two contemporary DOS machines on my network and each one has both a 5.25" and a 2.5". One machine is 360K, the other 1.2M. Since they're also interlnkd it's like having three drives in the same machine.

One problem with my setup is that both the 2.5" drives are A. I really need to get around to changing the A and B on the machine with the 1.2M drive, that way I can boot into any type and not have to make a 2.5" intermediate bootable disk as I do sometimes.

 

[Rick Ethridge]

I use my 1.2 meg 5.25" disk for converting image files to usable disks for my TRS-80 computers.

 

[PeterNY]

I use my 5.25" HD FDD in case I need to read data from 5.25" floppies. Not very often though. :D
Mind you, my modern machine in this case is an IBM PS/ValuePoint 325T. Modern to some, a true classic to others. ;-)

 

[Yzzerdd]

I have a 1995 Packard Bell that I use for my data conversion needs. It came with a 5.25" 1.2MB drive already installed. Original owner, all manuals, etc etc. Anyhow, it reads 360K disks just fine. Not only that, but using Windows 95, it also will WRITE to a 360K disk, and is still readable in my IBM 5150. I can then write using my 5150, and read/write with the Pack-Bell. First 1.2MB of it's kind that I have seen do that. I believe it's a Teak drive. Just when you think you don't need the drive, it comes in handy.

--Jack

 

[schlang]

Years ago I backuped my collection of 400 1,2MB 5,25" disks to several CD-Rs. In the end, most of the cheaper CD-Rs are failing whereas the 5,25" disks still work flawlessly today... even my C64 disks from 1986 are still working perfectly

 

[Tor]

Yep, same here, I've been going through old 5 1/4" floppies (PC and minicomputer) back to the late eighties, and there are only a tiny minority with read problems. Almost all of them work flawlessly. CDs though.. well, these days I don't usually store much on them, but I find myself constantly burning new versions of knoppix rescue CDs because the old ones stop working. And some of the backup CDs I made in the past (when I still backed up on CD) would fail after a year.

3.5" floppies though.. now, those are rubbish. It was a disaster that they replaced 5 1/4" floppies. Lots of data and history gone forever down the drain.

 

[tezza]

I've just finished imaging over 500 5.25 inch floppies. Some were showing visible signs of degredation (about 5%) so they didn't go near the drive but nearly all others were read and imaged successfully. From memory there were only two disks that showed read errors!

Getting back to the original question though, my XP box only allows one floppy to be connected via BIOS. The one connected on my machine and configured in BIOS is a 1.2 MB drive. HOWEVER, I also have a 1.44 MB 3.5 inch USB drive connected also. Horay for USB!

I find the 1.2 MB drive very useful for imaging the two types of PC disks. Also, if I want to WRITE images I can write both 1.2 disks and 360 disks just fine in that drive PROVIDING (for the 360 images) that I've pre-formatted the 360k disk FIRST and that I write the image without formatting. I like to have the option to do both types as my stock IBM AT only has a 1.2 MB drive.

So for me the 1.2 MB is very versitile and a necessary part of my XP Internet box.

Tez