OT -- 17 year old diskettes

========== After my recent computer disaster, I got a new computer, one without a floppy drive and no bay to install one. Indeed the motherboard did not have the header pins for a floppy drive cable, so I was unable to cannibalize the old cables and drives [3.5 + 5.25]

Walmart has a Sabrent USB unit that seems to work very well, and is available through their site to store program with "free" shipping. The one I got was 19.88$ + sales tax

They also have a new unit *INTERNAL* unit also from Sabrent for 17.22$ + sales tax that combines a USB 3.5 floppy drive with a multi format memory card reader. I have not tried this one or seen it in the flesh, but if you have an open bay and can access the internal USB port header pins it might be worthwhile. FWIW -- I just got the recovered data from the fried hard drive back from Fields Data Recovery Service. The did a pretty good job, and recovered almost 50 gig of data. The problem being that the file names and directory structure were lost, and the recovered files have names like

103472.dwg, 1125712.doc etc. so the only way to make this useful is open each of the files, rename and move to the correct directory. Backups are much cheaper and easier... I got good prompt service and the data was returned on a 500 gig Seagate SETA drive, which was quickly transferred to the main system drive using another Walmart site-to-store accessory. slower than a DMA connection, but works well with both the new desktop and laptop through a USB hub.

You lucked out. As I recall, 5.25's might hold for ~3 years.

3.5's might go for ~5 years; beyond that was iffy.

The hard drives were total opposites though--they could easily read & write data 10-15+ years if they were retired before they had mechanically failed.

This looks useful for milder accidents:

jsw

I think that I was lucky because the diskette sat unused and was not subject to mechanical wear.

i

I've had no problem reading 5.25 disks written in the early 80s, but I have had problems with the disk drive being inop - I think their longevity is much longer than you suggest - maybe that's a worst case. Just as CDs were to have a 10 year max shelf life and the printed ones (aluminized) seem to (so far) be fine at over 25 years

Sounds lucky to me as my experience is the opposite. The company I used to work for back before 2001 used to back stuff up on floppies into the mid to late 1990s and I found a few times that when trying to retrieve data it was corrupted and the discs were only 2-3 years old. May have been a computer drive issue but I did try retrieving the data on a few computers. In those days the company only used 3M Imation pre-formated discs IIRC as they found them to be movable between many computers drives without issue, other brands and formatting on a machine would often not be readable on other machines reliably. Up to the mid to late

1990s IIRC we were still sending releases out to a Swiss customer on floppies and DHLing them to Switzerland and the customer being able to read the discs was important. I do have a few discs though which were still readable over 15 years later last time I checked which wasn't that recently.

I had to get a USB floppy unit for my shop tower - no floppy in it. Handy for laptops also.

Some software comes that way or requires to be connected...

Mart> I had a 17 year old diskette (1994) with some of my old C code

This is what I had too.

I used Linux and the kernel recognized the device instantly.

i

Bill wrote in news:j5kti2$bh1$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

Floppies can be attacked by some sort of mold. Not only will this trash the floppy, but trying to read it will gunk up the drive. 5.25" floppies tend to be worse than 3.5's, either because of changes in the materials, or better sealing. It's mostly a problem if they've been stored where the humidity is high and isn't well controlled.

I have a small collection of 5.25's that I would like to at least LOOK at to see if they are worth transfering. Nobody seems to make a 5.25" to USB drive. The IT folks at work may have something, and I need to check.

Doug White

I have plenty of 5.25" floppy drives. Mostly 360KB, but some 1.2 MB.