I've got about 200 or so old A drive, 1.44 MB floppy disks. Some day, I'll
set up a reader, and copy all the data onto a drive, flash drive, or burn it
all the a DVD.

Is there any reason to keep the old floppies? Or should I pitch em out?

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
..

"Stormin Mormon" wrote in
:

I've got about 200 or so old A drive, 1.44 MB floppy disks. Some day,
I'll set up a reader, and copy all the data onto a drive, flash drive,
or burn it all the a DVD.

Is there any reason to keep the old floppies? Or should I pitch em
out?

What's the point in keeping them? When was the last time you saw a new computer with a diskette
drive?

Depending on what's stored on them, though, you might want to either securely erase them, or
physically destroy them, instead of just putting them in the trash -- any sort of financial data, medical
records, other personal information, plans for building nuclear warheads, etc.

On Sun, 19 Feb 2012 21:26:37 +0000 (UTC), Doug Miller
wrote:

"Stormin Mormon" wrote in
m:

I've got about 200 or so old A drive, 1.44 MB floppy disks. Some day,
I'll set up a reader, and copy all the data onto a drive, flash drive,
or burn it all the a DVD.

Is there any reason to keep the old floppies? Or should I pitch em
out?

What's the point in keeping them? When was the last time you saw a new computer with a diskette
drive?


Really. My Mo Bo doesn't even have a floppy (ribbon cable) connector
available. :-/

On 2/19/2012 2:25 PM, Stormin Mormon wrote:
I've got about 200 or so old A drive, 1.44 MB floppy disks. Some day, I'll
set up a reader, and copy all the data onto a drive, flash drive, or burn it
all the a DVD.

Is there any reason to keep the old floppies? Or should I pitch em out?

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
.




The last time I even had a floppy drive, it usually refused to read
whatever old floppy disk I gave it. Your experience may be better than
mine.

--


___________________________________

Keep the whole world singing . . .
Dan G
remove the seven

On Feb 19, 3:26*pm, Doug Miller
wrote:
"Stormin Mormon" wrote :

I've got about 200 or so old A drive, 1.44 MB floppy disks. Some day,
I'll set up a reader, and copy all the data onto a drive, flash drive,
or burn it all the a DVD.

Is there any reason to keep the old floppies? Or should I pitch em
out?

What's the point in keeping them? When was the last time you saw a new computer with a diskette
drive?

Depending on what's stored on them, though, you might want to either securely erase them, or
physically destroy them, instead of just putting them in the trash -- any sort of financial data, medical
records, other personal information, plans for building nuclear warheads, etc.

I agree. Some time ago I had a bunch of floppies, and several zip
drive discs (remember those?) After retrieving any needed data from
them, I physically destroyed them. As I rcall, I simply cut up the
floppies with tin snips, and drilled holes in all the zip drive discs.
Then I threw out the debris.
JimCo

Too bad they're not B drive floppies...those are worth some money.

"Stormin Mormon" wrote in message .. .
I've got about 200 or so old A drive, 1.44 MB floppy disks. Some day, I'll
set up a reader, and copy all the data onto a drive, flash drive, or burn it
all the a DVD.

Is there any reason to keep the old floppies? Or should I pitch em out?

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org

On 2/19/2012 2:25 PM, Stormin Mormon wrote:
I've got about 200 or so old A drive, 1.44 MB floppy disks. Some day, I'll
set up a reader, and copy all the data onto a drive, flash drive, or burn it
all the a DVD.

Is there any reason to keep the old floppies? Or should I pitch em out?

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
.



i tried that a few months ago with some that were about 8 or 10 years
old. Only would read about 5%. You'd better try soon if you think
there's something on them you want.

--
Steve Barker
remove the "not" from my address to email

On 2/19/2012 4:42 PM, DanG wrote:
On 2/19/2012 2:25 PM, Stormin Mormon wrote:
I've got about 200 or so old A drive, 1.44 MB floppy disks. Some day,
I'll
set up a reader, and copy all the data onto a drive, flash drive, or
burn it
all the a DVD.

Is there any reason to keep the old floppies? Or should I pitch em out?

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
.




The last time I even had a floppy drive, it usually refused to read
whatever old floppy disk I gave it. Your experience may be better than
mine.

Hmmmm....how much space to store future treasures? Some day, someone
will find some old floppies and need a floppy drive. I copied my
genealogy data for the family onto a CD and put a copy into the ancient
(1900) family album...by the time anyone finds the album and takes an
interest in the CD, the CD will likely be several generations too old to
read on whatever the current equipment is. Anyone priced copying old
8mm movies to CD/DVD? Or a bulb for a projector?

On Sun, 19 Feb 2012 17:34:07 -0500, "nobody" wrote:

Too bad they're not B drive floppies...those are worth some money.


Giggle. X, Y, and Z drive floppies are even more rare!

"Stormin Mormon" wrote in message .. .
I've got about 200 or so old A drive, 1.44 MB floppy disks.

My iozip died - "hiss of death" mangled the disks.

Makes me distrust any media.

I got a lot of PCSIG 5.25" floppies in the basement. My first DOS machine
was MS-DOS-Generic (no bit map) so I couldn't trust software. Ironically
MicroSoft (before IBM body snatched them during the OS2 deal and turned them
into FUD promoters) once promised all their stuff was MSDOS Generic and I had
bought MultiPlan which ran well.

- = -
Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus, BioStrategist
http://www.panix.com/~vjp2/vasos.htm
---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}---
[Homeland Security means private firearms not lazy obstructive guards]
[Urb sprawl confounds terror] [Phooey on GUI: Windows for subprime Bimbos]

DanG wrote:
On 2/19/2012 2:25 PM, Stormin Mormon wrote:
I've got about 200 or so old A drive, 1.44 MB floppy disks. Some day, I'll
set up a reader, and copy all the data onto a drive, flash drive, or burn it
all the a DVD.

Is there any reason to keep the old floppies? Or should I pitch em out?

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
.




The last time I even had a floppy drive, it usually refused to read
whatever old floppy disk I gave it. Your experience may be better than mine.


I have also had problems reading old disks. You also need to try at least a
couple different drives. I got tons of disks but luckily little or no
usefull stuff.
they make USB units, but try to find the old large ones!!!!

Greg

On Sun, 19 Feb 2012 20:48:33 -0500, wrote:

On Sun, 19 Feb 2012 18:35:55 -0600, Steve Barker
wrote:

On 2/19/2012 5:30 PM, Oren wrote:
On Sun, 19 Feb 2012 17:34:07 -0500, wrote:

Too bad they're not B drive floppies...those are worth some money.


Giggle. X, Y, and Z drive floppies are even more rare!

the only difference is that you could have a B drive floppy.

I have a little driver that will make any drive any address you want.
I think DOS after 5.0 had it in the distributions.

I recall a DOS command that allowed you to hide the drive letter.

The key strokes were "ALT 255 drive letter (syntax)" (something like
that). It would hide the drive..

Been a long time :-\

In article ,
Stormin Mormon wrote:
I've got about 200 or so old A drive, 1.44 MB floppy disks. Some day, I'll
set up a reader, and copy all the data onto a drive, flash drive, or burn it
all the a DVD.

Is there any reason to keep the old floppies? Or should I pitch em out?

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
.



Don't count on floppies to last forever. If they are more than about 10
years old they are no longer reliable. If you really want to keep the data on
them better copy it all onto a hard drive or flash drive now. Even if
every floppy is completely full, it's only about 300 MB, not much space
on today's storage devices.




--
Better to be stuck up in a tree than tied to one.

Larry Wasserman - Baltimore Maryland - lwasserm(a)sdf. lonestar.org

I'll admit, my current computer doesn't have an A-drive. I have one I bought
at a clearance, and could wire that in. Or, something else. But like you
say, not much sense keeping them.

For sure, I wouldn't want someone reading my data, I do have access to a
burn barrel.

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
..

"Doug Miller" wrote in message
. ..

What's the point in keeping them? When was the last time you saw a new
computer with a diskette
drive?

Depending on what's stored on them, though, you might want to either
securely erase them, or
physically destroy them, instead of just putting them in the trash -- any
sort of financial data, medical
records, other personal information, plans for building nuclear warheads,
etc.

I'm sure you're right, the data is probably decomposing.

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
..

"Steve Barker" wrote in message
...

i tried that a few months ago with some that were about 8 or 10 years
old. Only would read about 5%. You'd better try soon if you think
there's something on them you want.

--
Steve Barker
remove the "not" from my address to email

I think, when I got my last computer, I copied all the floppies to drive,
and then burned them to CD. Most likely, I already have all the data, copied
off. For sure, it sounds more like wasted space.

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
..

"Norminn" wrote in message
m...

Hmmmm....how much space to store future treasures? Some day, someone
will find some old floppies and need a floppy drive. I copied my
genealogy data for the family onto a CD and put a copy into the ancient
(1900) family album...by the time anyone finds the album and takes an
interest in the CD, the CD will likely be several generations too old to
read on whatever the current equipment is. Anyone priced copying old
8mm movies to CD/DVD? Or a bulb for a projector?

Oh, I threw those out last week. Along with the old German language Bible. A
"guten something" version. It wasn't worth anything, some guy named Martin
Luther had scribbled in all the margins.

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
..

"Oren" wrote in message
...

Giggle. X, Y, and Z drive floppies are even more rare!

So, give me a hint. You are how old? Bang your cane on the floor when I get
close. Ninety?

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
..

wrote in message
...
My iozip died - "hiss of death" mangled the disks.

Makes me distrust any media.

I got a lot of PCSIG 5.25" floppies in the basement. My first DOS machine
was MS-DOS-Generic (no bit map) so I couldn't trust software. Ironically
MicroSoft (before IBM body snatched them during the OS2 deal and turned them
into FUD promoters) once promised all their stuff was MSDOS Generic and I
had
bought MultiPlan which ran well.

- = -
Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus, BioStrategist
http://www.panix.com/~vjp2/vasos.htm
---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}---
[Homeland Security means private firearms not lazy obstructive guards]
[Urb sprawl confounds terror] [Phooey on GUI: Windows for subprime Bimbos]

My old 1983 vintage Xerox had A and B drives. Worked, for over 15 years, I
think it was. Finally died, and couldn't be revived. Or, maybe I just didn't
ask an old enough tech.

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
..

"Oren" wrote in message
...

the only difference is that you could have a B drive floppy.

Nay. People think you need to have C drive - simply not true...

Yes, I could copy that all to my (old computer's) hard drive. Burn it all
onto one CD, and pitch the lot of floppies into the burn barrel.

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
..

"Larry W" wrote in message
...

Don't count on floppies to last forever. If they are more than about 10
years old they are no longer reliable. If you really want to keep the data
on
them better copy it all onto a hard drive or flash drive now. Even if
every floppy is completely full, it's only about 300 MB, not much space
on today's storage devices.

In article ,
"Stormin Mormon" wrote:

I'm sure you're right, the data is probably decomposing.

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org

Maybe 6 months ago, a neighbor desperately tried to recover data from
(what looked to me like) maybe 6 or 7 hundred old 3.5" floppies.

Even after buying, borrowing and or otherwise acquiring numerous drives,
she claims to have only have recovered a low single digit percentage of
her data.

But (and you didn't hear it from me), those floppies weren't stored well
at all... just huge loose dusty piles on a table in a house reeking of
cigarette smoke; parts of the heap had received over a decade of direct
Sunlight as well.

Erik

"Erik" wrote in message
...

stuff snipped

But (and you didn't hear it from me), those floppies weren't stored well
at all... just huge loose dusty piles on a table in a house reeking of
cigarette smoke; parts of the heap had received over a decade of direct
Sunlight as well.

Poor storage can't help, but I've seen low recovery rates like that from
floppies stored under pretty good conditions. Although I'm certainly not a
recording engineer, from what I've read the thin plastic magnetic film just
wasn't designed for archival storage.

I can remember getting boxes of IBM and other "name brand" disks early on
that wouldn't format out to full capacity. I used to mark them -5K or
whatever in the corner of the disk to let me know they wouldn't "diskcopy"
reliably. Guess what the recovery rate for those disks is? Big fat zero.
They weren't any good when they were new and they didn't age into a better
state. (-:

My Win 3.1 install disks all went bad except for one, and they were stored
in a dark closet in the original box. Ah, for the manly days of DOS when
you *had* to know the magic words to get anything out of the C: prompt.

--
Bobby G.

"Stormin Mormon" wrote:
I've got about 200 or so old A drive, 1.44 MB floppy disks. Some day, I'll
set up a reader, and copy all the data onto a drive, flash drive, or burn it
all the a DVD.

Is there any reason to keep the old floppies? Or should I pitch em out?

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
.

One problem with the old disks, they may have shrunk. There is no centering
like CDs. One might tweak the alignment to get important info. I'm just
throwing in, something I just thought of.

I used to make mobiles with old CDs. I don't think floppies would look
cool.

Greg

On 02/19/2012 03:42 PM, Oren wrote:
On Sun, 19 Feb 2012 21:26:37 +0000 (UTC), Doug Miller

[snip]


Really. My Mo Bo doesn't even have a floppy (ribbon cable) connector
available. :-/

You can get USB 3.5-inch floppy drives. Apparently, there are none for
5.25-inch floppies.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us

"We've learned how to move under radar in the cover of the night with
shrubbery strapped to our helmets," [Ralph Reed, executive director of
Christian Coalition]

On 02/19/2012 04:34 PM, nobody wrote:
Too bad they're not B drive floppies...those are worth some money.

[snip]

The original PC floppy controller allowed 4 floppy drives. DOS would
address these with the letters A:, B:, C:, D: (note that later DOS would
address the 3rd and 4th floppies after hard drives).

Drive letters don't exist on the hardware or disks, but only in SOME
operating systems (DOS / Windows).

BTW, I have an old 8-inch floppy. IIRC, the capacity (single-sided) was
just over 1MB.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us

"We've learned how to move under radar in the cover of the night with
shrubbery strapped to our helmets," [Ralph Reed, executive director of
Christian Coalition]

On Mon, 20 Feb 2012 11:05:54 -0600, Mark Lloyd
wrote:

The original PC floppy controller allowed 4 floppy drives. DOS would
address these with the letters A:, B:, C:, D: (note that later DOS would
address the 3rd and 4th floppies after hard drives).

Do you recall the DOS version? I didn't know DOS used C: drive for
floppies. ISTR DOS v.3.x skipped C: and assigned it to the HDD.

I could be wrong.

On Mon, 20 Feb 2012 05:14:48 -0500, "Robert Green"
wrote:

Ah, for the manly days of DOS when
you *had* to know the magic words to get anything out of the C: prompt.

Or write a 15 page batch file (BBS) and then call it at boot up.. I
had two phone lines in the day. The file would run modem commands,
even call me for a wake-up call :-\

I don't miss it at all.

Stormin Mormon wrote:
Yes, I could copy that all to my (old computer's) hard drive. Burn it
all onto one CD, and pitch the lot of floppies into the burn barrel.


Optical-burn CDs degrade with time. While their life-time is long, it is not
forever.

If you do put vital, historical, data on a CD, you also need a recycling
program wherein the data on the CD is copied afresh to a new one.

Every three years, say, devote a day to refreshing your CD collection.

Commercial CDs don't have this problem in that they are not "burnt," they
are created physically by mechanical pressing.

I've seen web pages of deviced made with AOHell disks. Floppies don't have
the artistic value.

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
..

"gregz" wrote in message
...

One problem with the old disks, they may have shrunk. There is no centering
like CDs. One might tweak the alignment to get important info. I'm just
throwing in, something I just thought of.

I used to make mobiles with old CDs. I don't think floppies would look
cool.

Greg

Thanks, I've heard that about CD and DVD made at home.

Good advice.

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
..

"HeyBub" wrote in message
m...
Stormin Mormon wrote:
Yes, I could copy that all to my (old computer's) hard drive. Burn it
all onto one CD, and pitch the lot of floppies into the burn barrel.


Optical-burn CDs degrade with time. While their life-time is long, it is not
forever.

If you do put vital, historical, data on a CD, you also need a recycling
program wherein the data on the CD is copied afresh to a new one.

Every three years, say, devote a day to refreshing your CD collection.

Commercial CDs don't have this problem in that they are not "burnt," they
are created physically by mechanical pressing.

"HeyBub" wrote in message
m...
Stormin Mormon wrote:
Yes, I could copy that all to my (old computer's) hard drive. Burn it
all onto one CD, and pitch the lot of floppies into the burn barrel.


Optical-burn CDs degrade with time. While their life-time is long, it is
not forever.

If you do put vital, historical, data on a CD, you also need a recycling
program wherein the data on the CD is copied afresh to a new one.

Every three years, say, devote a day to refreshing your CD collection.

Commercial CDs don't have this problem in that they are not "burnt," they
are created physically by mechanical pressing.

Some CDs are certainly better than others from the archival standpoint.
Here's the article that's been my guideline on the subject for the past few
years: http://www.rense.com/general52/themythofthe100year.htm Has anybody
looked into the so-called archival "Gold" CDs? The claim for them is a 300
year life.

Tomsic

On 2/20/2012 2:42 PM, Oren wrote:
On Mon, 20 Feb 2012 11:05:54 -0600, Mark
wrote:

The original PC floppy controller allowed 4 floppy drives. DOS would
address these with the letters A:, B:, C:, D: (note that later DOS would
address the 3rd and 4th floppies after hard drives).

Do you recall the DOS version? I didn't know DOS used C: drive for
floppies. ISTR DOS v.3.x skipped C: and assigned it to the HDD.

I could be wrong.

you are correct.

--
Steve Barker
remove the "not" from my address to email

"Mark Lloyd" wrote in message . com...

BTW, I have an old 8-inch floppy.
--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us


Try a Viagra.

On 2/20/2012 7:06 PM, nobody wrote:

"Mark Lloyd" wrote in message
. com...

BTW, I have an old 8-inch floppy. --
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us


Try a Viagra.

hell if it's 8" floppy, all he needs is a tongue depressor and some duct
tape.

--
Steve Barker
remove the "not" from my address to email

But, make sure you're married to a floppy drive. No sense having a hard
drive all alone.

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
..

"nobody" wrote in message ...

"Mark Lloyd" wrote in message
. com...

BTW, I have an old 8-inch floppy.
--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us


Try a Viagra.

"Doug Miller" wrote in message
. ..
Depending on what's stored on them, though, you might want to either
securely erase them, or
physically destroy them, instead of just putting them in the trash -- any
sort of financial data, medical
records, other personal information, plans for building nuclear warheads,
etc.

That's what we did will all of my dad's computer info when he died in 1997.
He was still using a trash80 (!) and all his stuff was stored on 5.25 floppy
drives! So I came back home after the funeral and had a box of disks my
mother gave me to "sort things out". Amazingly, I found a local store that
had 5.25 drives, and the guy gave me 3 of them for FREE! He just wanted them
gone and wished me good luck. We finally got one of them to read the files,
but the major problem was that, in my dad's opinion, software was something
you wrote, not something you bought, so trying to figure out how to read the
stuff was nearly impossible. We eventually had to go get my dad's computer
and spend hours figuring it all out.

Reason number 468 why I have all my stuff on "normal" media and created in
current software. I certainly don't want anyone else going through the
hassle we had sorting out stuff for my mom.

And, once we finally got everything printed/copied, we chopped up the 5.25
diskettes...not like anyone else could have used the data, but still.

"Oren" wrote in message
news
On Mon, 20 Feb 2012 05:14:48 -0500, "Robert Green"
wrote:

Ah, for the manly days of DOS when
you *had* to know the magic words to get anything out of the C: prompt.

Or write a 15 page batch file (BBS) and then call it at boot up.. I
had two phone lines in the day. The file would run modem commands,
even call me for a wake-up call :-\

I don't miss it at all.

I had a programmer that worked for me that could do things with batch files
that were astounding. We were having trouble at an installation run by a
data tyrant who was always making changes that would screw up our software.
This kid wrote batch files that scanned the network each day and created an
"image" of the system through directory commands, piping, etc. The next
time it was run, it would compare the last snapshot with the current one,
revealing which files had changed. That gave us some excellent ammo to
confront the data manager. "I see you changed so-and-so. Why?" After
enough of that, he stopped screwing with us.

I've saved a notebook of all the batch files this guy wrote because they
were so amazing. The DOS batchfile language was enormously powerful,
although 99% of the people that used batch files never got past anything
more simple than a serial list of commands to execute.

I miss it in the sense that you could tell right away whether someone knew
what they were doing based on how well they could navigate around from the
C: prompt. Now, they can just click around and *look* like they know what
they're doing. About the same as the switch from manual to automatic
cameras.

--
Bobby G.

It's been my experience that the floppy drive doesn't work as well after the wedding as it did before.
Personally, I'd never buy another floppy drive...I'd just lease one when I needed it.

"Stormin Mormon" wrote in message ...
But, make sure you're married to a floppy drive. No sense having a hard
drive all alone.

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
.

"nobody" wrote in message ...

"Mark Lloyd" wrote in message
. com...

BTW, I have an old 8-inch floppy.
--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us


Try a Viagra.

On Mon, 20 Feb 2012 10:52:41 -0600, Mark Lloyd wrote:

On 02/19/2012 03:42 PM, Oren wrote:
On Sun, 19 Feb 2012 21:26:37 +0000 (UTC), Doug Miller

[snip]


Really. My Mo Bo doesn't even have a floppy (ribbon cable) connector
available. :-/

You can get USB 3.5-inch floppy drives. Apparently, there are none for
5.25-inch floppies.

Although I think the data transfer rate at the drive interface is 500k/s
for 3.5" HD and 5.25" HD, so if the guts of such a device are just a
standard 3.5" HD drive and an adapter between USB and the shugart
interface, then it should be possible to hook up a 5.25" drive and have
it work transparently (the cylinder counts are the same; the rotational
speed's a little different, but the interface shouldn't care)

cheers

Jules

On Sun, 19 Feb 2012 15:42:56 -0600, DanG wrote:
The last time I even had a floppy drive, it usually refused to read
whatever old floppy disk I gave it. Your experience may be better than
mine.

Old disks collect dust - the heads in the drive need to be manually
cleaned quite often when dealing with old media (and if it's really bad
then it can be worth removing the magnetic disk from the protective
jacket, cleaning it, then reassembling).

Newer (as in 1990s or even more recent) 3.5" HD media was also often junk
- I think QC started to go to hell as floppy use died out and media
companies started cutting corners and producing a sub-standard product.

I've read thousands of disks, though - even stuff from the very early 80s
typically holds up well. 5.25" disks from Parrot and Wabash seem to be
the main exception - the binder which sticks the magnetic coating to the
plastic substrate seems to fail on those more often than on disks from
other vendors; typical behavior is a screech from the drive as the
coating parts company with the disk, sometimes followed by a crunch as
the drive heads part company with the drive :-/

[always looking for vintage systems / parts, incidentally - chopping the
'moo' out of my email address should reach me]

cheers

Jules