jaybird3rd, on Mon Jan 23, 2012 3:22 PM, said:
I've still got a box full of Atari 5.25-inch floppies which are getting close to thirty years old. Some of them are copied disks that I made around 1983, while others are commercial disks. The vast majority of them still work perfectly, even the homemade "flippies", and so do my original Atari 1050 floppy drives.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, I've found that 5.25-inch media is much more reliable than 3.5-inch media. Even on systems which format them to a higher density than Atari's 90K, I've had exceptionally good luck with 5.25-inch diskettes. High-density 3.5-inch diskettes are horrible by comparison. I don't know whether it was because of the increased areal density, or because floppy drives cheapened to the point where they became $11 throwaway parts, or if it's the diskettes that cheapened. Perhaps the increased "ruggedness" of 3.5-inch diskettes also lead people to treat them less carefully.
It's really a mixture of these aspects.
I've read stories on blogs talking about how the old floppy disks are all trash today. And that you need a lot of good luck in finding a drive that is working, and how hopeless it is to count on them for long-term storage. I would tend to disagree. These blogs are written by tech neophytes that haven't got a clue.
Consider this: The tolerances of a 5.25 disk (and the data stucture) is pretty loose when compared to modern storage media. The areal density is remarkably low. And yet, the electronics punched-in the magnetic domains just as hard as they do today. The data bits on 5.25 floppies are like tanks. And with all the loose tolerances going on, you could get a lot of variation in the drive and still have it remain functional.
Regarding the unreliability of 3.5-inch disks - I have to say that the ideas and concepts advanced too far too fast. The areal density is too high also. The mechanics have been cost-cut down to almost nothing. The tolerances are too small. Too many drives built to unexacting standards. WAY WAY too many manufacturers of media and drives. Dirt can be trapped inside them. Perceived durability above that of "standard" 5.25 disks. That's a recipe for disaster.
I've recently thought it was a "conspiracy" to get us to move up to better and newer storage devices. But I don't think that's the case here. There really was a need to push for greater storage capacity. It's just that the manufacturing/quality was not up to handling it.
Just examine the construction of a Shugart assembly compared to the no-name shit that flows out Taiwan or some other sweatshop. It was brute-force and heavy metal that gave the classic computers the ability to stand the test of time. Today's computing devices, while infinitely better engineered, are built out of shit materials and cost-cut to almost non-existence.
Shit..man.. my Sider 10 MEGABYTE hard disk has lower density than a 3.5" 1.44MB floppy. IIRC, when I took one of them apart I think there was 4 platters in there, double sided, 5.25 in diameter more or less. So that's 8 large surfaces holding 10MEGS. And, like I said before, I am totally impressed that it powered up after 28 years and all the data was readable. Ha! And this was a drive that you had to manually park the heads. I remember typing BRUN PH. With PH being a 3 sector binary program that moved the head assembly to a dead spot on the platters. Whenever I was done with the drive I had a big red sign next to its power switch that I had to lift up in order power it down. It had a drawing of a car shaped like a dick pulling into a fluffy parking space.
Edited by Keatah, Mon Jan 23, 2012 4:18 PM.
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