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Do any stores still sell floppy disks?



 
 
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  #1  
Old November 3rd 17, 06:41 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
No_Name
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 177
Default Do any stores still sell floppy disks?

My bootable DOS floppy disk died. I had not used it in several years,
but wanted to boot up with the floppy to install a new harddrive on an
old Windows 98 machine, with no CD drive.

I have looked in several stores. None sell them anymore.

I found a 5pack on ebay, for $5 and bought them. That was the cheapest I
found for NEW ones. Some were ridiculously priced, and there were some
used ones selling cheap, and saying "no returns" "untested", etc. I'll
pass on those!!!

Then there was someone selling 20 dead 5.25 inch floppies for around
$29, plus $10 shipping. It said "For Art Projects".... (Apparently his
garbage can is full, and he really thinks he will find a sucker)....

Someone even had some 8" floppies. I heard of them, but never saw them.
That's got to be very old.

Anyhow, I am just curious if anyone has seen any floppies in any stores
lately.


Just curious, how much data did those 8" floppies hold? I have a
feeling they held less than the 360K 5.25 Inch.....

Ads
  #2  
Old November 3rd 17, 06:50 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
J. P. Gilliver (John)[_4_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,679
Default Do any stores still sell floppy disks?

In message ,
writes:
My bootable DOS floppy disk died. I had not used it in several years,
but wanted to boot up with the floppy to install a new harddrive on an
old Windows 98 machine, with no CD drive.

I have looked in several stores. None sell them anymore.


(I _think_ I've seen them in poundshops in the last five years; I
haven't looked for them lately!)

I found a 5pack on ebay, for $5 and bought them. That was the cheapest I
found for NEW ones. Some were ridiculously priced, and there were some
used ones selling cheap, and saying "no returns" "untested", etc. I'll
pass on those!!!


Would they be unusable, or just have lost any data on them?

Then there was someone selling 20 dead 5.25 inch floppies for around
$29, plus $10 shipping. It said "For Art Projects".... (Apparently his
garbage can is full, and he really thinks he will find a sucker)....

Someone even had some 8" floppies. I heard of them, but never saw them.
That's got to be very old.


When I left my main employer back in March, I think they still had some
machines that used them; I worked in the R&S ("Readiness and
Sustainment", officially - but everyone knew it really was "repairs and
spares") department. It was an avionics company: when companies (or the
military) have spent millions on an aircraft, they expect it to be
supported for several decades, and thus the equipment to service it had
to be kept going. And with some of the units we supported only turning
up once every few years, it wasn't worth the investment to update the
service equipment - if it works, don't fix it ...

Anyhow, I am just curious if anyone has seen any floppies in any stores
lately.


Just curious, how much data did those 8" floppies hold? I have a
feeling they held less than the 360K 5.25 Inch.....

I think it was some tens of k - maybe 80K? (or 64?)

Possibly, not least _because_ of the low capacity (and thus density),
they might actually be quite reliable. I don't think I'd want to try
though (-:!

The 360K was just the IBM PC capacity - and that for double-sided discs;
5¼" discs when used in other machines had different capacities - same
discs. DFS on the BBC Micro, for example, was IIRR 100K a side (and ADFS
on the BBC Master 160K a side). That was for 80 track drives - half that
for 40 track drives.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

What does that even mean, star? It's just 'rats' backwards
- Art Malik in RT 2016/3/12-18
  #3  
Old November 3rd 17, 08:31 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Shadow
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,638
Default Do any stores still sell floppy disks?

On Fri, 03 Nov 2017 11:41:14 -0600, wrote:

My bootable DOS floppy disk died. I had not used it in several years,
but wanted to boot up with the floppy to install a new harddrive on an
old Windows 98 machine, with no CD drive.


You could put that hard drive on another machine (if you have
an IDE connector) and just install the boot from there (and copy the
win98 installer).
sys c:

????

Rufus could probably do it(assuming the second computer has a
USB), but that would install FreeDOS. Don't know if the Win98
installer will accept that.

There was a HD size limit on win98. I remember I had trouble
installing a 4GB (?) drive on it a "while" ago. You'd better check it
out.

I have looked in several stores. None sell them anymore.


I have hundreds of 3.5" 1,4 Mb and maybe a hundred 5.25" (both
single and double sided). I imaged/zipped them all with Winimage and
put them on a single CD. Wife is always nagging me to throw them out.
Maybe 60% are still good.
I live in Brazil, postage/customs would be too expensive or
I'd send you a couple of boxes...
No idea about 8". Before my time. Wiki it.
Good luck with your project (you'll need it).
[]'s

I found a 5pack on ebay, for $5 and bought them. That was the cheapest I
found for NEW ones. Some were ridiculously priced, and there were some
used ones selling cheap, and saying "no returns" "untested", etc. I'll
pass on those!!!

Then there was someone selling 20 dead 5.25 inch floppies for around
$29, plus $10 shipping. It said "For Art Projects".... (Apparently his
garbage can is full, and he really thinks he will find a sucker)....

Someone even had some 8" floppies. I heard of them, but never saw them.
That's got to be very old.

Anyhow, I am just curious if anyone has seen any floppies in any stores
lately.


Just curious, how much data did those 8" floppies hold? I have a
feeling they held less than the 360K 5.25 Inch.....

--
Don't be evil - Google 2004
We have a new policy - Google 2012
  #4  
Old November 4th 17, 05:01 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
No_Name
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 627
Default Do any stores still sell floppy disks?

On Fri, 3 Nov 2017 17:50:11 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

Just curious, how much data did those 8" floppies hold? I have a
feeling they held less than the 360K 5.25 Inch.....

I think it was some tens of k - maybe 80K? (or 64?)

Possibly, not least _because_ of the low capacity (and thus density),
they might actually be quite reliable. I don't think I'd want to try
though (-:!

The 360K was just the IBM PC capacity - and that for double-sided discs;
5¼" discs when used in other machines had different capacities - same
discs. DFS on the BBC Micro, for example, was IIRR 100K a side (and ADFS
on the BBC Master 160K a side). That was for 80 track drives - half that
for 40 track drives.
--


IBM had 1 meg 8" floppies and 2.4 meg 5.25" along with the 2.88m 3.5s
  #5  
Old November 4th 17, 09:48 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
VanguardLH[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,881
Default Do any stores still sell floppy disks?

james wrote:

My bootable DOS floppy disk died. I had not used it in several years,
but wanted to boot up with the floppy to install a new harddrive on an
old Windows 98 machine, with no CD drive.

I have looked in several stores. None sell them anymore.

I found a 5pack on ebay, for $5 and bought them. That was the cheapest I
found for NEW ones. Some were ridiculously priced, and there were some
used ones selling cheap, and saying "no returns" "untested", etc. I'll
pass on those!!!

Then there was someone selling 20 dead 5.25 inch floppies for around
$29, plus $10 shipping. It said "For Art Projects".... (Apparently his
garbage can is full, and he really thinks he will find a sucker)....

Someone even had some 8" floppies. I heard of them, but never saw them.
That's got to be very old.

Anyhow, I am just curious if anyone has seen any floppies in any stores
lately.

Just curious, how much data did those 8" floppies hold? I have a
feeling they held less than the 360K 5.25 Inch.....


So it is top secret that only you know what size floppy you want. Could
be 3.5", 5.25", or 8". You only mentioned the 8" size (Pelican) and
those are far older than your XP computer.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/y92odc83
Change "3.5" to whatever size you need. The price is high because of
the prolonged storage costs for ancient media. You're trying to acquire
a portion of a very limited inventory.

How do you know the floppy diskette is the problem. Maybe it is the
floppy drive. Have you tested other floppies in the drive to make sure
the drive is working?

All magnetic media incurs dipole stress which means it loses retentivity
over time. The dipoles are no longer perpendicular and the less they
are the weaker becomes the bits. That's why all magnetic media requires
refreshing, especially for those areas that never change (only read,
never written). Most users replace hard disks long before retentivity
(data integrity) becomes a problem but floppies become weaker faster.
Every time a floppy is read, there is friction to the media from the
head riding against the diskette. HDDs have their heads flying OFF the
surface. The more you use floppies, the faster they wear out. The soft
cotton-like padding inside is to brush off and cling to the loosened
particles. Their data integrity also becomes unreliable after a few
years due to dipole stress in a flexible media (unless refreshed).

There are tools to refresh magnetic media. I remember GRC Spinrite had
it. Others have a refresh, too (I think HDD Regenerator has refresh).
Haven't needed them in so long that I long ago was too old in my version
of Spinrite to qualify for an upgrade (and it costs more than many
HDDs).

https://www.storagecraft.com/blog/da...rage-lifespan/
  #6  
Old November 4th 17, 03:23 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
J. P. Gilliver (John)[_4_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,679
Default Do any stores still sell floppy disks?

In message , VanguardLH
writes:
james wrote:

My bootable DOS floppy disk died. I had not used it in several years,
but wanted to boot up with the floppy to install a new harddrive on an
old Windows 98 machine, with no CD drive.

I have looked in several stores. None sell them anymore.

I found a 5pack on ebay, for $5 and bought them. That was the cheapest I
found for NEW ones. Some were ridiculously priced, and there were some
used ones selling cheap, and saying "no returns" "untested", etc. I'll
pass on those!!!

Then there was someone selling 20 dead 5.25 inch floppies for around
$29, plus $10 shipping. It said "For Art Projects".... (Apparently his
garbage can is full, and he really thinks he will find a sucker)....

Someone even had some 8" floppies. I heard of them, but never saw them.
That's got to be very old.

Anyhow, I am just curious if anyone has seen any floppies in any stores
lately.

Just curious, how much data did those 8" floppies hold? I have a
feeling they held less than the 360K 5.25 Inch.....


So it is top secret that only you know what size floppy you want. Could
be 3.5", 5.25", or 8". You only mentioned the 8" size (Pelican) and
those are far older than your XP computer.


It was fairly clear to me that his mention of the 8" ones was only that
he found someone selling some. I agree it's not clear whether he wanted
3½ or 5¼, though I think the former since he mentions the latter only re
the art-seller.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/y92odc83
Change "3.5" to whatever size you need. The price is high because of
the prolonged storage costs for ancient media. You're trying to acquire
a portion of a very limited inventory.


(Note: VanguardLH is just saying "use Google", but hiding that by using
tinyurl. Above is _not_ a link to a specifc vendor. Thinking it was, I
followed it, thinking 'I bet they don't have 3" ones' [as opposed to
3½], but of course I couldn't. [3" was a - IMO, superior, for mechanical
reasons - format that came out about the same time the 3½" one did, but
never caught on, presumably as it must have cost more to make.])

How do you know the floppy diskette is the problem. Maybe it is the
floppy drive. Have you tested other floppies in the drive to make sure
the drive is working?


That's a good point.

All magnetic media incurs dipole stress which means it loses retentivity
over time. The dipoles are no longer perpendicular and the less they
are the weaker becomes the bits. That's why all magnetic media requires
refreshing, especially for those areas that never change (only read,


Though true that magnetic media lose retentivity over time (so should be
refreshed/copied), I'm not sure they all involve _perpendicular_
dipoles; certainly linear recording tape doesn't, and I don't _think_
floppies do. I think most HD technologies do.
[]
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

The average US shareholding lasts 22 seconds. Nobody knows who invented the
fire hydrant: the patent records were destroyed in a fire. Sandcastles kill
more people than sharks. Your brain uses less power than the light in your
fridge. The Statue of Liberty wears size 879 shoes.
- John Lloyd, QI supremo (RT, 2014/9/27-10/3)
  #7  
Old November 4th 17, 07:53 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
VanguardLH[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,881
Default Do any stores still sell floppy disks?

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

VanguardLH WROTE:

james wrote:

My bootable DOS floppy disk died. I had not used it in several years,
but wanted to boot up with the floppy to install a new harddrive on an
old Windows 98 machine, with no CD drive.

I have looked in several stores. None sell them anymore.

I found a 5pack on ebay, for $5 and bought them. That was the cheapest I
found for NEW ones. Some were ridiculously priced, and there were some
used ones selling cheap, and saying "no returns" "untested", etc. I'll
pass on those!!!

Then there was someone selling 20 dead 5.25 inch floppies for around
$29, plus $10 shipping. It said "For Art Projects".... (Apparently his
garbage can is full, and he really thinks he will find a sucker)....

Someone even had some 8" floppies. I heard of them, but never saw them.
That's got to be very old.

Anyhow, I am just curious if anyone has seen any floppies in any stores
lately.

Just curious, how much data did those 8" floppies hold? I have a
feeling they held less than the 360K 5.25 Inch.....


So it is top secret that only you know what size floppy you want.
Could be 3.5", 5.25", or 8". You only mentioned the 8" size
(Pelican) and those are far older than your XP computer.


It was fairly clear to me that his mention of the 8" ones was only that
he found someone selling some. I agree it's not clear whether he wanted
3½ or 5¼, though I think the former since he mentions the latter only re
the art-seller.


Except I don't remember any PC-XT in 1982 or later "PCs" having an
internal 8" floppy drive. Those were externally attached drives on PCs.
They did come with 5.25" internal drives. There may be custom setups
that had 8" drives as internal, like the old IBM 360 mainframes that
used an 8" floppy for the IPL (inital program load) but I severely doubt
the OP is running Windows XP on that setup. I don't recall what was the
minimum hardware requirement for Windows XP but I don't think an old
8088 even with a Nec V20 coprocessor was acceptable to the XP installer.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...rating-systems

That probably excludes any old consumer-grade PC that had an internal 8"
floppy. The OP never actually mentioned the floppy drive was internal
(attached to mobo controller or daughtercard) or external (via parallel,
serial, USB, or other hardware protocol interface).

http://preview.tinyurl.com/y92odc83
Change "3.5" to whatever size you need. The price is high because of
the prolonged storage costs for ancient media. You're trying to
acquire a portion of a very limited inventory.


(Note: VanguardLH is just saying "use Google", but hiding that by using
tinyurl. Above is _not_ a link to a specifc vendor. Thinking it was, I
followed it, thinking 'I bet they don't have 3" ones' [as opposed to
3½], but of course I couldn't. [3" was a - IMO, superior, for mechanical
reasons - format that came out about the same time the 3½" one did, but
never caught on, presumably as it must have cost more to make.])


It's Froogle, or Google's Shopping search. I did a search on 3.5"
floppies and found some sellers. No, doesn't look like they are cheap.

The Google search URL is ridiculously long hence the use of a short
redirection URL; however, unlike other redirection services, TinyURL
lets me specify the preview hostname so users can see to where the URL
points BEFORE they get pushed to there.

All magnetic media incurs dipole stress which means it loses
retentivity over time. The dipoles are no longer perpendicular and
the less they are the weaker becomes the bits. That's why all
magnetic media requires refreshing, especially for those areas that
never change (only read,


Though true that magnetic media lose retentivity over time (so should be
refreshed/copied), I'm not sure they all involve _perpendicular_
dipoles; certainly linear recording tape doesn't, and I don't _think_
floppies do. I think most HD technologies do.


1 bits are those dipoles perpendicular to the reading direction. Over
time due to dipole stress (magnetic relaxation), the dipole field
becomes less than perpendicular until completely relaxed and
indistinguishable as a differentiation as a 1 bit. Even zeroes must be
stressed (written) to provide differentiation. The less the
differentiation (the more relaxed the dipole) the less likely the media
provides reliable distinction between of bit state.

I'm not discussing whether the media uses longtitudinal or perpendicular
recording regarding the physical media and the sensor head. Sorry,
perpendicular was incorrect as often I see the dipoles are 180 degrees
differentiated regardless of recording direction. In old HDDs, the
dipoles were arranged longitudinally (horizontal and parallel to the
platter surface) but changed to perpendicular recording to increase
density. However, the 1 and 0 dipoles are opposite of each other (180
degrees, not perpendicular as I said) to provide differentiation between
those states. I don't recall what floppies used for magnetic recording
orientation. I think tape had the dipoles perpendicular to the
direction of the tape movement but I'd have to check.

Also, without a change in the recording material, going to higher
density means less material (grains) of magnetic material used for a
dipole (or magnetic domain). The whole point was that magnetic media
that sits around un-refreshed will lose retentivity of its data.
Magnetic material can resist self-demagnetization but not stop it. My
recollection is that tape was better than floppies for archival storage.

I've seen companies that stored archival data on floppies even under
excellent environmental conditions but still lose data (but those using
tape did not). That was long ago where they learned the hard way that
floppies are not for archival storage. One company where I was the
software librarian (just one of many duties in a hydra job) would store
HDDs with the OS, software product version(s), and all support software
to archive the product. Periodically I also had to order, test, and
archive an entire PC with the HDDs to make sure the technology was still
available some 20 to 40 years later. This was to make sure the product
could be reproduced or tested again under the same conditions as for a
customer using an old product on an old OS on old hardware. There were
some customers still using 30-old versions of the enterprise software.
If they pay for support then they get it but we needed to ensure we
could oblige. I think the oldest stuff involved mortgages because that
data and software to use it has to be around for 40 years by law.

The OP really needs to test if the drive is bad or just the floppy
(whatever size). Presumably if he has one diskette then he has some
more he can use for testing. They were mechanical drives and I remember
running into a few that get out of alignment. In fact, a floppy that
was formatted and read/wrote just fine in one computer was unusable in
another computer with the same type of drive. One of the drives was out
of alignment. No idea if the boot floppy the OP has was created using
the drive in the computer he is trying to boot or written using a drive
in a different computer.
  #8  
Old November 4th 17, 09:53 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
mike[_10_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,073
Default Do any stores still sell floppy disks?

On 11/4/2017 11:53 AM, VanguardLH wrote:
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

VanguardLH WROTE:

james wrote:

My bootable DOS floppy disk died. I had not used it in several years,
but wanted to boot up with the floppy to install a new harddrive on an
old Windows 98 machine, with no CD drive.

I have looked in several stores. None sell them anymore.

I found a 5pack on ebay, for $5 and bought them. That was the cheapest I
found for NEW ones. Some were ridiculously priced, and there were some
used ones selling cheap, and saying "no returns" "untested", etc. I'll
pass on those!!!

Then there was someone selling 20 dead 5.25 inch floppies for around
$29, plus $10 shipping. It said "For Art Projects".... (Apparently his
garbage can is full, and he really thinks he will find a sucker)....

Someone even had some 8" floppies. I heard of them, but never saw them.
That's got to be very old.

Anyhow, I am just curious if anyone has seen any floppies in any stores
lately.

Just curious, how much data did those 8" floppies hold? I have a
feeling they held less than the 360K 5.25 Inch.....

So it is top secret that only you know what size floppy you want.
Could be 3.5", 5.25", or 8". You only mentioned the 8" size
(Pelican) and those are far older than your XP computer.


It was fairly clear to me that his mention of the 8" ones was only that
he found someone selling some. I agree it's not clear whether he wanted
3½ or 5¼, though I think the former since he mentions the latter only re
the art-seller.


Except I don't remember any PC-XT in 1982 or later "PCs" having an
internal 8" floppy drive. Those were externally attached drives on PCs.
They did come with 5.25" internal drives. There may be custom setups
that had 8" drives as internal, like the old IBM 360 mainframes that
used an 8" floppy for the IPL (inital program load) but I severely doubt
the OP is running Windows XP on that setup. I don't recall what was the
minimum hardware requirement for Windows XP but I don't think an old
8088 even with a Nec V20 coprocessor was acceptable to the XP installer.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...rating-systems

That probably excludes any old consumer-grade PC that had an internal 8"
floppy. The OP never actually mentioned the floppy drive was internal
(attached to mobo controller or daughtercard) or external (via parallel,
serial, USB, or other hardware protocol interface).

http://preview.tinyurl.com/y92odc83
Change "3.5" to whatever size you need. The price is high because of
the prolonged storage costs for ancient media. You're trying to
acquire a portion of a very limited inventory.


(Note: VanguardLH is just saying "use Google", but hiding that by using
tinyurl. Above is _not_ a link to a specifc vendor. Thinking it was, I
followed it, thinking 'I bet they don't have 3" ones' [as opposed to
3½], but of course I couldn't. [3" was a - IMO, superior, for mechanical
reasons - format that came out about the same time the 3½" one did, but
never caught on, presumably as it must have cost more to make.])


It's Froogle, or Google's Shopping search. I did a search on 3.5"
floppies and found some sellers. No, doesn't look like they are cheap.

The Google search URL is ridiculously long hence the use of a short
redirection URL; however, unlike other redirection services, TinyURL
lets me specify the preview hostname so users can see to where the URL
points BEFORE they get pushed to there.

All magnetic media incurs dipole stress which means it loses
retentivity over time. The dipoles are no longer perpendicular and
the less they are the weaker becomes the bits. That's why all
magnetic media requires refreshing, especially for those areas that
never change (only read,


Though true that magnetic media lose retentivity over time (so should be
refreshed/copied), I'm not sure they all involve _perpendicular_
dipoles; certainly linear recording tape doesn't, and I don't _think_
floppies do. I think most HD technologies do.


1 bits are those dipoles perpendicular to the reading direction. Over
time due to dipole stress (magnetic relaxation), the dipole field
becomes less than perpendicular until completely relaxed and
indistinguishable as a differentiation as a 1 bit. Even zeroes must be
stressed (written) to provide differentiation. The less the
differentiation (the more relaxed the dipole) the less likely the media
provides reliable distinction between of bit state.

I'm not discussing whether the media uses longtitudinal or perpendicular
recording regarding the physical media and the sensor head. Sorry,
perpendicular was incorrect as often I see the dipoles are 180 degrees
differentiated regardless of recording direction. In old HDDs, the
dipoles were arranged longitudinally (horizontal and parallel to the
platter surface) but changed to perpendicular recording to increase
density. However, the 1 and 0 dipoles are opposite of each other (180
degrees, not perpendicular as I said) to provide differentiation between
those states. I don't recall what floppies used for magnetic recording
orientation. I think tape had the dipoles perpendicular to the
direction of the tape movement but I'd have to check.

Also, without a change in the recording material, going to higher
density means less material (grains) of magnetic material used for a
dipole (or magnetic domain). The whole point was that magnetic media
that sits around un-refreshed will lose retentivity of its data.
Magnetic material can resist self-demagnetization but not stop it. My
recollection is that tape was better than floppies for archival storage.

I've seen companies that stored archival data on floppies even under
excellent environmental conditions but still lose data (but those using
tape did not). That was long ago where they learned the hard way that
floppies are not for archival storage. One company where I was the
software librarian (just one of many duties in a hydra job) would store
HDDs with the OS, software product version(s), and all support software
to archive the product. Periodically I also had to order, test, and
archive an entire PC with the HDDs to make sure the technology was still
available some 20 to 40 years later. This was to make sure the product
could be reproduced or tested again under the same conditions as for a
customer using an old product on an old OS on old hardware. There were
some customers still using 30-old versions of the enterprise software.
If they pay for support then they get it but we needed to ensure we
could oblige. I think the oldest stuff involved mortgages because that
data and software to use it has to be around for 40 years by law.

The OP really needs to test if the drive is bad or just the floppy
(whatever size). Presumably if he has one diskette then he has some
more he can use for testing. They were mechanical drives and I remember
running into a few that get out of alignment. In fact, a floppy that
was formatted and read/wrote just fine in one computer was unusable in
another computer with the same type of drive. One of the drives was out
of alignment. No idea if the boot floppy the OP has was created using
the drive in the computer he is trying to boot or written using a drive
in a different computer.

one of the frequently encountered failures happens when 'cat hair'
gets on the head rails. Calibration steps it to the end and references
from there. The cat hair moved it off track.


  #9  
Old November 4th 17, 10:13 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
No_Name
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 177
Default Do any stores still sell floppy disks?

On Sat, 4 Nov 2017 03:48:30 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:

There are tools to refresh magnetic media. I remember GRC Spinrite had
it. Others have a refresh, too (I think HDD Regenerator has refresh).
Haven't needed them in so long that I long ago was too old in my version
of Spinrite to qualify for an upgrade (and it costs more than many
HDDs).


Going way back to the Dos days, I had a friend who I'll refer to as a
"computer geek". He was good as a technician, hacker, and probably had
darn near every piece of software one needed at that time. I had an old
IBM PC (floppy only) computer. I took it to him, and he hooked up a hard
drive to it. I still recall buying that USED hard drive at a computer
store, and paying a fortune for it. It was something like 10 megs.

After connecting the hard drive, he ran Spin Rite on it. I recall that
took hours and I had to come back the next day to get my stuff, since I
think it ran all night. The next day I got my computer and he said that
my hard drive was good. I was new at all this stuff, and I was impressed
by Spin Rite, so before I left, he gave me a copy of it on a floppy.

Since I later archived all my floppies onto a hard drive, I still have
that old Spin Rite. So, if I boot my Win98 machine to Dos, can I run
that old version of Spin Rite to regenerate some floppies? Will that
work?

I have not used any of that old stuff in years, but I always kept all
software if it was useful.

Also, since I just bought 5 new blank floppies on ebay, should I run it
on them? They are NEW floppies, but probably "new old stock". I had
already planned to re-format them, but maybe I should do more.... I knew
that floppies went bad over time, but I never knew why. Now I do.
Thanks for the info.


  #10  
Old November 5th 17, 12:21 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
No_Name
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 627
Default Do any stores still sell floppy disks?

On Sat, 04 Nov 2017 15:13:34 -0600, wrote:

On Sat, 4 Nov 2017 03:48:30 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:

There are tools to refresh magnetic media. I remember GRC Spinrite had
it. Others have a refresh, too (I think HDD Regenerator has refresh).
Haven't needed them in so long that I long ago was too old in my version
of Spinrite to qualify for an upgrade (and it costs more than many
HDDs).


Going way back to the Dos days, I had a friend who I'll refer to as a
"computer geek". He was good as a technician, hacker, and probably had
darn near every piece of software one needed at that time. I had an old
IBM PC (floppy only) computer. I took it to him, and he hooked up a hard
drive to it. I still recall buying that USED hard drive at a computer
store, and paying a fortune for it. It was something like 10 megs.

After connecting the hard drive, he ran Spin Rite on it. I recall that
took hours and I had to come back the next day to get my stuff, since I
think it ran all night. The next day I got my computer and he said that
my hard drive was good. I was new at all this stuff, and I was impressed
by Spin Rite, so before I left, he gave me a copy of it on a floppy.

Since I later archived all my floppies onto a hard drive, I still have
that old Spin Rite. So, if I boot my Win98 machine to Dos, can I run
that old version of Spin Rite to regenerate some floppies? Will that
work?

I have not used any of that old stuff in years, but I always kept all
software if it was useful.

Also, since I just bought 5 new blank floppies on ebay, should I run it
on them? They are NEW floppies, but probably "new old stock". I had
already planned to re-format them, but maybe I should do more.... I knew
that floppies went bad over time, but I never knew why. Now I do.
Thanks for the info.

I have dragged out 30 year old diskettes and the data was pretty much
toast but you can bulk degauss them, format and they seem fine to use
again. I have a bunch of diskettes archived to disk image files and
when I load them fresh they seem fine. I did a DOS 6.3 load recently
and after refreshing the diskettes it was OK.
  #11  
Old November 5th 17, 03:13 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
J. P. Gilliver (John)[_4_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,679
Default Do any stores still sell floppy disks?

In message ,
writes:
[]
Since I later archived all my floppies onto a hard drive, I still have
that old Spin Rite. So, if I boot my Win98 machine to Dos, can I run
that old version of Spin Rite to regenerate some floppies? Will that
work?


I don't think it runs under DOS - I think it's its own OS. So you might
need to put it back onto a floppy to boot it.

Regardless, once you get it running, on hardware that it used to run on,
it should do what it always did: software doesn't decay (assuming the
floppy image file isn't corrupted)! So if regenerating floppies was/is
one of the things it does, then it still will.

I have not used any of that old stuff in years, but I always kept all
software if it was useful.

Also, since I just bought 5 new blank floppies on ebay, should I run it
on them? They are NEW floppies, but probably "new old stock". I had
already planned to re-format them, but maybe I should do more.... I knew
that floppies went bad over time, but I never knew why. Now I do.
Thanks for the info.

I think formatting should work - from what I remember, formatting
floppies didn't do a "quick" format, but did check every sector.

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Religion is a name for opinion that cannot be argued about. [Heard on Radio 4,
2010-10-18, 9:xx.]
 




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