• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Floppy reliability. Is it just me?

B

bushmechanic

Experienced Member
Joined
Jan 4, 2015
Messages
93
Location
Carolinas, USA
It's always seemed to me that 5.25" disks are much more reliable than 3.5" disks.

Perhaps it's better production standards, given their age. Maybe it's data density, and less is indeed more in this venue. I've even wondered if the nature of their proper floppiness has anything to do with it; giving in the wind, rather than resisting, as it were.

It could just be that I've repeatedly ended up with bad 3.5" disks over the years, by chance alone. Perhaps you all got the good ones.

Or perhaps I've been seeing something that isn't really there.

EDIT: Corrected
 
Last edited:
bushmechanic said:
It's always seemed to me that 5.25" disks are much more reliable than 3.25" disks.

Perhaps it's better production standards, given their age. Maybe it's data density, and less is indeed more in this venue. I've even wondered if the nature of their proper floppiness has anything to do with it; giving in the wind, rather than resisting, as it were.

It could just be that I've repeatedly ended up with bad 3.25" disks over the years, by chance alone. Perhaps you all got the good ones.

Or perhaps I've been seeing something that isn't really there.
Click to expand...

That last line is funny because, well, most of them are 3.5" floppy drives. If 3.25" ones exist they are very rare. : - )

And yes, your general observation is correct. As things went mass-market the engineering cost had to be cut. So while technology generally improves with time, the cost pressure and increased data density did not help.

Make sure you clean the drive heads periodically. Even with high quality media 10 to 20 years of use is going to cause some physical damage to the media, and a lot of that will wind up on the drive heads. Floppy drives are kind of nasty in that they rely on direct contact between the heads and the media.
 
mbbrutman said:
That last line is funny because, well, most of them are 3.5" floppy drives. If 3.25" ones exist they are very rare. : - )
Click to expand...

Yes, I have two, with media. They were used on a version of the Seequa Chameleon; most users replaced them with standard 3.5" drives, which are the same physical size.

For what it's worth (not much today), I noticed a decline in media quality when Dysan/Verbatim moved production to the Far East. As an aside, NOS Imation media is not as good in my experience as NOS 3M 3.5" floppies, even though it's basically the same manufacturer.

Of course, Wabash floppies are just bad news...
 
That last line is funny because, well, most of them are 3.5" floppy drives. If 3.25" ones exist they are very rare. : - )
Click to expand...

LOL

I've had a few head injuries. I must have typed that three or four times before I decided it was correct.

The best part is, I realized suddenly that I got it wrong while deciding between ravioli and shells and meatballs in a supermarket yesterday, and then forgot about it until you mentioned it. :D
 
mbbrutman said:
And yes, your general observation is correct. As things went mass-market the engineering cost had to be cut. So while technology generally improves with time, the cost pressure and increased data density did not help.

Make sure you clean the drive heads periodically. Even with high quality media 10 to 20 years of use is going to cause some physical damage to the media, and a lot of that will wind up on the drive heads. Floppy drives are kind of nasty in that they rely on direct contact between the heads and the media.
Click to expand...

My brother "used to have a studio". He's always on about dusting magnetic media on his recording heads. Never uses them anymore (don't think he ever did), but god forbid you mention tape. You'll never shut him up.
 
This question comes up regularly, so I'll just repeat my standard reply: I have tried to recover my old floppies, and all my old 5 1/4" floppies read fine (going back to mid-eighties), except two that appear to be completely blank - it's almost as if they have been degaussed at some point. On the other hand, I now consider all of my considerable collection of 3.5" media lost. Can't read any of them, read errors all over the place. Whatever drive I use. They were stored under the same conditions as the 5 1/4" floppies. HD, DSDD, the 5 1/4" ones seem to handle age well. The HD (1.44MB) 3.5", not so much (which is the major part of my 3.5" collection).
 
Storage matters--my floppies have been stored at about 20C (68F) under about 40-50 percent RH for many years. I have no problems reading 8" and 5.25" floppies from the 1970s. On the other hand, I've had floppies sent in from the tropics (e.g. Philippines) that are disintegrating (i.e. oxide flaking off) without even being placed in a drive. Some of the really bad stuff can be salvaged by "baking".

3.5" floppies are a mixed bag. Original Sony disks are still pretty readable, but perhaps not writable.
 
I suppose I should consider picking up another gun safe. They work well for humidity and temperature control.

I never did like 3.5" disks. They were always finicky, and now that I'm actually considering why that might have been the case, it makes sense. They certainly haven't aged well.

Sometimes you just have to use the darned things, whether you like it or not.

I have found, though, that old program disks (as shipped by a software company) tend to work a bit better. I've been using a genuine set of DOS disks for quite some time to move things about. They hiccup every now and again, but I can always make them work. I wouldn't normally screw up an original disk, but I've been using these for years.

Here's another question:

CH. That's molded into the case of many disks from many brands. Is this a standard, or is it a single manufacturer providing private labeling services?

I don't recall this being the case for every disk I've used.
 
bushmechanic said:
I have found, though, that old program disks (as shipped by a software company) tend to work a bit better. I've been using a genuine set of DOS disks for quite some time to move things about. ... I wouldn't normally screw up an original disk, but I've been using these for years.
Click to expand...
These are the type of disks I advertise in my SIG (below). They are all original software releases from major manufacturers that have been factory reformatted and over-labeled. I've been using them for over twenty years and they are reliable.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Weren't you wondering why the manufacturer's printing on the slider was upside down? :huh:
Click to expand...

I did once. I just figured it was a production necessity after tooling had already been developed for blank sliders. It was as good a hypothesis as any.

My first 286 was built essentially in an expertise and publishing vacuum. I managed some pretty crazy stuff with a pile of discarded and broken junk from the dumpster of a petrochemical lab that went under, but a lot of the obvious passed me right by. I wish I had a picture of that machine. It was nuts. I didn't even know what the thing was supposed to look like when I started; I just knew I wanted to make that crap do something.

It still looks like CH to me, no matter how I turn it. LOL I guess I wasted a lot of ink back in the day.
 
To be fair, it is a stylized "HD", but that's just a standards convention, just like the various labelings on CD- and DVD-ROM drives and USB devices. Consider the following 2.88M floppy and the stylized "ED":

3.5-inch-Micro-floppy-ED-front.png
 
Last edited:
bushmechanic said:
I just figured it was a production necessity after tooling had already been developed for blank sliders. It was as good a hypothesis as any.
Click to expand...
No, in reality, it wasn't!

To believe that this was the driving force this was done on an *industry-wide* level is completly without reason, logic or thought. :)
 
Note that in the above ED photo, the adhesive floppy label is also indicating "this side up" by its placement of the word "INDEX".

You're not Australian, by any chance, are you? :)
 
Stone said:
In all fairness, the label was not attached at the factory -- the end-user did this. But at least he had a clue! :)
Click to expand...

Uh, yeah--who the heck wants a label with a band of solid color where the writing goes? ;) But then, you've undoubtedly seen connectors mashed and bent to fit the wrong way, too.
 
Chuck(G) said:
But then, you've undoubtedly seen connectors mashed and bent to fit the wrong way, too.
Click to expand...
I didn't know you were there. :) I had a client, about 15 years ago, who was a Dentist, not a dumb guy, who tried to upgrade his machine himself with a new hard drive. He managed to force the molex power connector into the drive backwards! Needless to say he had to call me to fix that MESS! :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top