dinosaur Posted December 19, 2006 Share Posted December 19, 2006 Being an old fart and long time Atari (and PC ) user,I have,of course accumulated about a zillion disks. Seems like the 1.44M disks fail more than the 720K disks and the 720K disks fail more than the 5.25" disks. I am speaking of disks of about the same age. It amazes me how many of my 25 year old 5.25" floppies are still dependable. I just pulled out a 1.44M floppy containing Maxtor's MaxBlast 1.27 that I copied about four years ago and the program would not run,due to bad sectors on the disk! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted December 19, 2006 Share Posted December 19, 2006 It gets worse again. CD-Rs fail more, and so do DVD-Rs. I've probably thrown out maybe a dozen 5.25 disks ever, 30 or so 3.5s, but probably average that many a year in CD and DVD coasters. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pengwin Posted December 19, 2006 Share Posted December 19, 2006 It seems that the higher the storage capacity, the more fragile the media/data Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted December 19, 2006 Share Posted December 19, 2006 Exactly. On the 8-bit, I never used DOS with write+verify. But, when I burn a DVD with anything other than trivial data on it, I almost always run a verify on the entire disc. Lack of trust and optical media go hand in hand. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Larry Posted December 19, 2006 Share Posted December 19, 2006 Being an old fart and long time Atari (and PC ) user,I have,of course accumulated about a zillion disks. Seems like the 1.44M disks fail more than the 720K disks and the 720K disks fail more than the 5.25" disks. I am speaking of disks of about the same age. It amazes me how many of my 25 year old 5.25" floppies are still dependable. I just pulled out a 1.44M floppy containing Maxtor's MaxBlast 1.27 that I copied about four years ago and the program would not run,due to bad sectors on the disk! My experience has been similar, but not quite identical. Well-written SD disks seem to just about "live forever," while 1.44's as you mention, are pretty "iffy." But my experience with 720's on an Atari 8-bit is a little different. While I've found 5-1/4" DD's fragile (probably due to the drives as much as anything), I've found only one bad 3-1/2 DD disks that I'd written. And it was corrupted, so I can't really say that it failed. I had not heard previously that CD-R's had a problem. RW's, yes, but R's no. I actually archive stuff on CD-R's *and* ZIP carts, but I am always very conservative on the write speed of CD's and verify the writes. -Larry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorclu Posted December 19, 2006 Share Posted December 19, 2006 So far no problem with CD-R's. I archive to that, and make another backup of really important things. 5 1/4 floppies do tend to live a while. On average, but I'm not counting on it. My least favorite media are hard drives. My favorite is flash media. But CD's to me are good for archiving. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted December 19, 2006 Share Posted December 19, 2006 (edited) I recently dug out a box of 90K Atari 5.25-inch floppies that dates back to about 1982, and every one of the disks in that box worked perfectly, and so does every one of my 1050 drives. On the other hand, fresh-out-of-the-box 3.5-inch disks seem to go bad after two or three writes, and the drives are so cheap that they aren't even worth the cost of a head cleaning kit (if you can find one anymore). I don't remember how much new 1050 drives cost when they were first released, but I'm guessing at least $200. New 3.5-inch floppy drives cost about $8 nowadays. As I see it, manufacturers had to make drastic cuts in quality as well as cost to get their drives down to under $10, and the unreliability of the media is only one symptom of that. Of course, now that we have CD and DVD burners, people would probably wonder who cares about floppies anymore, but it's still sad to me to see the drop in quality. And it isn't just floppy drives, either: with a few exceptions (most notably hard drives), computer hardware from the early 80s seems to be more solid and stable overall than modern computer hardware. How many off-the-shelf budget boxes from HP will still be running in twenty-five years? Edited December 19, 2006 by jaybird3rd Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Almost Rice Posted December 19, 2006 Share Posted December 19, 2006 I don't remember how much new 1050 drives cost when they were first released, but I'm guessing at least $200. New 3.5-inch floppy drives cost about $8 nowadays. As I see it, manufacturers had to make drastic cuts in quality as well as cost to get their drives down to under $10, and the unreliability of the media is only one symptom of that. The local electronics store has a box of 20 drives without face plates for $10, but I could not justify putting out $10 for it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dinosaur Posted December 20, 2006 Author Share Posted December 20, 2006 re:the original post: The four year old copy of MaxBlast on a 1.44M floppy had bad sectors. Just for the hell of it,I pulled out the oldest Atari floppy that I have: Dos2.0 on an original Atari floppy (circa 1982) and my first disk drive: an 810 (circa 1982) and guess what: The drive worked and tjhe floppy booted! I have not connected that drive in over 15 years! Atari Forever! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ppera Posted January 8, 2007 Share Posted January 8, 2007 By my experiences most relevant here is quality of media. I have lot of HD (1.6MB) capacity floppies with ST software on, and best brand is Comteam and Sony, while for instance Basf is total crap. Similar is with DD (800KB) floppies, maybe generally they are in little better condition, but it is not much difference. I talk here about floppies old over 15 years. Same stays for CDs and DVDs. Primedisk (Ritek is real manufacturer) is crap, and after 1-2 years half media has many or some unreadable parts. On the other side Verbatim is flawless. What will be after 15 years...? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LYNXGUY Posted January 10, 2007 Share Posted January 10, 2007 My best friend and i still play our games that we have on 5 1/2 inch floppies since 1982 and all 24 are fine and I too have trouble with the newer 1.44 MB floppies after a few writes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr.Amiga500 Posted April 30, 2007 Share Posted April 30, 2007 (edited) I totally agree that modern electronics, computer hardware and media are crap compared to the 1980's. I use a 20-year-old Amiga 500 as my primary computer and have used it just about every single day for an average of 4 hours/day for the last 5 years (previous 10 years in storage, first 5 years average 2 hours/day). The only thing that ever went wrong was a broken plastic floppy eject button in 1992. I replaced it with a broccoli tab and had no problems since. The Windows notebook computer I was forced to used at work completely died and had to be replaced after only 2 months! The replacement computer had to have the harddrive replaced three times because of failures. In 2002 I briefly owned a Windows sub-notebook, but it also died within one month and had to be returned. I use a 1989 Commodore 1084 monitor with my Amiga (so it's also used every single day) and have had no problems. I bought a new TV in 2005 and after only one month it started screwing up and became totally unfocused and blurry. Of my many original DD 3.5" (880K) Amiga floppies, I think only one has a read error in one block (affecting one file). The rest of the data can still be read. Of my 20 or so CD-ROMs, I get read errors about 20% of the time - and it's totally inconsistent. Some discs aren't even recognized. My DVD player constantly gets read errors and I have the torture of watching a corrupted movie with the painful knowledge that it will only get worse. The DVD player eventually crashes and I have to unplug it to "reboot" because it won't respond when you try to turn it off. Yes, modern technology sucks. Edited April 30, 2007 by Mr.Amiga500 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Urchlay Posted April 30, 2007 Share Posted April 30, 2007 I totally agree that modern electronics, computer hardware and media are crap compared to the 1980's. It seems to me that sometime in the 1980s, they quit teaching the KISS principle to engineering students... modern electronics do really impressive and complex things when they work, but they're so failure-prone... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tezz Posted April 30, 2007 Share Posted April 30, 2007 Something to bear in mind is that storage media (and hardware for that matter) do not have the same manufacturing quality as we have enjoyed (to a greater degree i mean) in the past. One of the benefits computer users have enjoyed over recent years is ever falling prices and bigger, faster, better products.. for instance, the original low capacity hard drives lasted many years compared with around 3-years (if you're lucky) stated now.. In 2002 most hdd manufacturers dropped warranties to only 1 year which was re-instated back to 3-years in 2004/05 (if i remember rightly).. there are other factors in the relability comparison, modern hard drives are much more hammered in use than the simple storage they were in the past but even so there is still a difference in quality and reliability. Products designed today are not designed to last, they are quickly superseeded and belong in todays terrible throw away society.. anyway, getting back to subject, this is party the case with cd and dvd media, how many of you buy quality disks with quality substrate layer manufacturing such as Verbatim? most general mass made spindled dvd/cd media are poorly made i guess to be treated as throw away for burning everyday junk. I certainly wouldn't entrust them to archive anything important. CF media is stated at a 15 year lifespan and the popular "pen" usb storage drives have a very limited rewrite lifespan. Solid state devices are the future but a long way to go yet to compare and indeed exceed current technologies Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LYNXGUY Posted May 1, 2007 Share Posted May 1, 2007 One of the benefits computer users have enjoyed over recent years is ever falling prices and bigger, faster, better products.. for instance, the original low capacity hard drives lasted many years compared with around 3-years (if you're lucky) stated now My questions are Do you buy a "newer" product or wait till something better comes along ?? Is it worth spending money on something only to have it get outdated in a very short time and when something new and improved comes out do you purchase that ?? "quality substrate layer manufacturing" ??? Can you please explain what that is please ??? the popular "pen" usb storage drives have a very limited rewrite lifespan What is the lifespan of a "pen" usb storage drive ??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted May 1, 2007 Share Posted May 1, 2007 Substrate layer just refers to the process for making CD and DVD-Rs. They have an organic die which is sandwiched in between the plastic outer layers - the die is the stuff that the drive "burns" the data into. The quality of the dies and processes varies, so you have premium discs like Taiko-Yuden (sp?) and Verbatim, and cheap generic crap like Laser and Ritek. USB pen-drives usually have 100,000 or so write cycles "guaranteed". In real life, a lot fail well before that. USB in itself isn't failsafe - you can plug a device into a live machine and damage it. Rare, but possible. +1 on modern gear being crap compared to the 1980s. But back then you'd buy a computer with the intention of it lasting 5 years or more. These days, lots of people count on 18 months as a turnaround time between upgrades/machines. As for when to buy - wait for tech to mature a bit. Like DVD burners (and now Blu-Ray and HD-DVD). Initially, they were over $1,000 but once they achieve economies of scale and recover the dev cost they become the $50 throwaway items they are today. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tezz Posted May 1, 2007 Share Posted May 1, 2007 (edited) Substrate layer just refers to the process for making CD and DVD-Rs. They have an organic die which is sandwiched in between the plastic outer layers - the die is the stuff that the drive "burns" the data into. The quality of the dies and processes varies, so you have premium discs like Taiko-Yuden (sp?) and Verbatim, and cheap generic crap like Laser and Ritek That's a good explanation The dye and the quality of the manufacturing is of the upmost importance. Verbatim media is regarded amongst the best in the industry. USB pen-drives usually have 100,000 or so write cycles "guaranteed". In real life, a lot fail well before that.indeed, i've seen some fail sooner. (It's a shame really, they are a very convienient storage device) USB in itself isn't failsafe - you can plug a device into a live machine and damage it. Rare, but possiblealso very true my bro killed his 4gb pen a few weeks back simply plugging it in, the voltage carried in usb can be a devices downfall.. I certainly agree about waiting for new technologies to fully evolve, mature and become reliable, affordable and mainstream. I mean it's two fold realyy, the cost with the outlay of development of new technology by manufacturers is of course reflected in it's early extremely high pricing but it's as much important that it has the time to be developed fully so your not paying a massive cost for a beta technology. With technology and developments moving so fast today, generally if you were to hang fire and wait for the next development, you'd never buy anything because there will always be something new and better round the corner. constant upgrading to stay ahead and not be left behind is really the only way to stay on top.. keeping hold of your "modern" stuff for too long for it to depriciate is the worse thing to do. if you sell on your "current" stuff and buy the future products, your outlay is minimised and you stay up to date and ahead of the game. Fortunately, the reverse is true in the vintage world.. we can just enjoy computing for what it should be without the forced rat race with modern Mac's and PC's Edited May 1, 2007 by Tezz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.