InvisibleMan

another drive bites it why do floppy drives break down so easily or is it just me i now have a nice collection over the years.

set up a pc for someone, all working great, take it round to the persons houose to set up, read from a disk afew times then the drive just packed up pees me off that i have to buy yet another one. what could be going wrong???

Henrik

iTrader: (5)

Possibly dirty floppies...

The magnetic 'stuff' on the platter comes off easily after a few years contaminating the head.

Btw, I'm freestyling, but it sounds plausible to me

ozzy

Floppies are just **** and are easily contaminated with dirt, grime & especially dust.
Either buy a cleaning diskette and maintain it regularly or some air in a can to keep it dirt free.

Because the heads are so sensitive, they can step out of alignment. The disk tracks get written slightly differently to the standard, so you can find reading them in another drive won't work or even better it screws the disk up completely when the heads are all gunked up.

I avoid them at all costs now and use some cheap USB memory sticks to transfer data.

Stefan

InvisibleMan

it was more embaressing than anything else. it may be only £5 online & wait for it to arrive. it was meant as a favour not really charging much as i had stacks of spare stuff so getting a very good deal for a whole package printer'n'all. itll end up costing me more

theyre not pc literate not internet connected but want specifically to be able to save docs to hand to people

ozzy

Floppies are just so unreliable. My mum works for the NHS and they ONLY use floppies to save data

They have their own server in the Hospital, but IT won't give them space or even provide a proper backup solution. OK, it's a small Hospital, but they've already lost documents because of dirty floppy drives.

Shocking really.

wiltshire_boy

Aren't there "issues" with XP (if that's what you are using) and floppies?

Try a search on www.support.microsoft.com.

ozzy

Not that I'm aware of. I've had problems in our office on NT4, Win98, XP and W2K.

IMHO floppies are **** and should be left in the early 90's

Stefan

Stueyb

yeah, but they are so handy for boot disks, and those emergency almost kiss your data goodbye situations.

ozzy

That's true and I do still use them exactly for that.

Stefan

InvisibleMan

well in this particular case its employment agencies wanting a hard copy. Hes already been moaned at by them cos he couldnt email to them

Jiggerypokery

A CD would be just as cheap, and more reliable.