[sebhc] Shelf life of floppies

[William Wilkinson]

Same here with my 5-1/4" disks--both hard-sectored and soft.  In general,
I've found that they seem to survive better than many of the 3.5" floppies
that I'd purchased less than 10 years ago.

--Bill


> [Original Message]
> From: Barry Watzman <Watzman at neo.rr.com>
> To: <sebhc at sebhc.org>
> Date: 5/16/2006 7:53:14 AM
> Subject: RE: [sebhc] Shelf life of floppies
>
> Shouldn't be a problem unless they were stored at high temps or extreme
> humidity.  I have hundreds of 8" floppy diskettes from the 1970's that are
> still good.  My "read success rate" with these is greater than 98%.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: sebhc-bounces at sebhc.org [mailto:sebhc-bounces at sebhc.org] On Behalf
Of
> Mark Garlanger
> Sent: Tuesday, May 16, 2006 2:35 AM
> To: sebhc
> Subject: [sebhc] Shelf life of floppies
>
> Does anyone know what the shelf life of floppies should be? I was able
> to aquired about 80 HD 5.25" disks and 40 DD 5.25" disks that were
> still sealed in their boxes.The disks had to be in the boxes for over
> 15 years, since a few of the boxes had a promo  which expired in 1991.
> I am hoping they are all still good (I haven't been able to test them
> yet, since I still don't have a working soft-sectored controller, but
> a system with one should be arriving shortly.) The disks are 3M with a
> 'Lifetime' warranty. Amazing, the toll free number on the back of the
> disk jacket is still operation, but instead of 3M, it said 'Imation
> data storage customer service'. Searching around 3M and imation's
> sites, it appears that Imation is a spin-off of 3M.
>
> Anyone have any experience between the reliability of 3.5" floppies
> and 5.25" ones? The 3M 5.25" disks are a better brand and have the
> lifetime warranty, but they appear a little older than  a batch of 100
> generic "Office Centre" DD 3.5" disks I got off of ebay. Those look
> like they are from 1994 or later.
>
> For my system, I may be able to get two external drive cases working,
> one with 2 - 5.25" DS 96tpi drives, and another with 1 of those and a
> 3.5" DD drive. This would allow me to swap those with the H89 as
> needed and I should be able back-up all the software on both 3.5" and
> 5.25" disks.


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