Subj : Re: Do any stores still sell floppy disks? To : All From : gfretwell@aol.com Date : Thu Jan 31 2019 19:16:21 Path: eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org !feeder.eternal-september.org!news.linkpendium.com!news.linkpendium.com!news.sn arked.org!border2.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!buffer2.nntp.dca1.gi ganews.com!buffer1.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!news.giganews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2017 18:21:19 -0500 From: gfretwell@aol.com Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general Subject: Re: Do any stores still sell floppy disks? Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2017 19:21:04 -0400 Message-ID: <9bisvc5vff3e1841vvguofuomiqt23jo3r@4ax.com> References: <1j8eptyfoo7to.dlg@v.nguard.lh> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.91/32.564 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 42 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com X-Trace: sv3-LIwGCLBlq5qkDb/ROMTKnfWA8o+cMTPGUBvAbgbsd2ihn9aEh8TU1AuNw9V/ZLJI5rWhjeUejH0 gXTY!1iHiKdbV+ucbqBTWJaVwRCbgT4YZWiomdEssBCCAodcJMdZvF5aaziuTwbqdQk4eWUVrXps= X-Complaints-To: abuse@giganews.com X-DMCA-Notifications: http://www.giganews.com/info/dmca.html X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 X-Original-Bytes: 3349 Xref: news.eternal-september.org microsoft.public.windowsxp.general:134418 On Sat, 04 Nov 2017 15:13:34 -0600, james@nospam.com wrote: >On Sat, 4 Nov 2017 03:48:30 -0500, VanguardLH wrote: > >>There are tools to refresh magnetic media. I remember GRC Spinrite had >>it. Others have a refresh, too (I think HDD Regenerator has refresh). >>Haven't needed them in so long that I long ago was too old in my version >>of Spinrite to qualify for an upgrade (and it costs more than many >>HDDs). > >Going way back to the Dos days, I had a friend who I'll refer to as a >"computer geek". He was good as a technician, hacker, and probably had >darn near every piece of software one needed at that time. I had an old >IBM PC (floppy only) computer. I took it to him, and he hooked up a hard >drive to it. I still recall buying that USED hard drive at a computer >store, and paying a fortune for it. It was something like 10 megs. > >After connecting the hard drive, he ran Spin Rite on it. I recall that >took hours and I had to come back the next day to get my stuff, since I >think it ran all night. The next day I got my computer and he said that >my hard drive was good. I was new at all this stuff, and I was impressed >by Spin Rite, so before I left, he gave me a copy of it on a floppy. > >Since I later archived all my floppies onto a hard drive, I still have >that old Spin Rite. So, if I boot my Win98 machine to Dos, can I run >that old version of Spin Rite to regenerate some floppies? Will that >work? > >I have not used any of that old stuff in years, but I always kept all >software if it was useful. > >Also, since I just bought 5 new blank floppies on ebay, should I run it >on them? They are NEW floppies, but probably "new old stock". I had >already planned to re-format them, but maybe I should do more.... I knew >that floppies went bad over time, but I never knew why. Now I do. >Thanks for the info. > I have dragged out 30 year old diskettes and the data was pretty much toast but you can bulk degauss them, format and they seem fine to use again. I have a bunch of diskettes archived to disk image files and when I load them fresh they seem fine. I did a DOS 6.3 load recently and after refreshing the diskettes it was OK. --- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.1 * Origin: Prison Board BBS Mesquite Tx //telnet.RDFIG.NET www. (1:124/5013) .