Doug White wrote:

Bill wrote in :

On 9/24/2011 1:43 AM, DougC wrote:
On 9/23/2011 11:39 PM, Ignoramus14736 wrote:
I had a 17 year old diskette (1994) with some of my old C code
archives from 1988 or so. I could never get around to reading it,
finally bought a USB diskette reader. To my utter surprise, I could
read it and recovered all archives. Now I have my old MS-DOS library
that I wrote and made money using. Amazing...

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.

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

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.


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

--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.