binder@dosadi.DEC (Do not adjust your set...) (04/03/84)
>>> I certainly agree with buying the best diskettes >>> you can get. It's simply not worth the headwear >>> and grief to save a few dollars. > I don't understand this. I have never seen a floppy (brand) > that didn't fail. The cheap diskettes are about half of the > price of the Maxell/Verbatim/Dysan group. If you use both sides > this means that you can make four copies for the price of one. > So even if you make two backups you're saving money. I agree > that after a lot of use the cheap diskettes are less reliable > than the expensive ones, but the vast majority of my diskettes > sit on the shelf as backups so reliability is not a factor. > Buying expensive disketttes is like buying something from > IBM, you pay a whole bunch of money for a false sense of security. > > jrh Right? Wrong. I have never seen a floppy brand that didn't fail eventually, but there is more than meets the eye here. Sure, you can get four times the storage. There is a very real problem, however, when you turn diskettes over and use the back side. The wiper material in a floppy's jacket is designed to sweep the disk clean when it is rotated forward, and turning the disk over makes it rotate backward. All sorts of crud comes out of that wiper, back onto the disk and under the head, causing a higher error rate and gobbing up the head, making more frequent cleaning necessary. Add to this problem the fact that cheap diskettes are more abrasive, and what you end up with is greatly accelerated head wear. I make money writing with my computer, and I don't relish the prospect of having to replace my head assembly when it goes west in the middle of a deadline-critical session just because I saved a few pennies on disks. I am using only DEC floppies, which cost $3.50 in lots of 50 - for my money, they're worth the false (?) sense of security. Dick Binder decvax!decwrl!rhea!dosadi!binder Tuesday 3rd April 1984, 09:29 Eastern time
gurr@west44.UUCP (04/11/84)
<burp!>
The only brand of diskette I have had problems with is Wabash: apart from
sounding like I've got the cleaning disk in when the drive starts, they
are so tight in the sleeve that they won't centre properly on the drive
head, and so I have to centre them by hand before I insert them !!!
As for losing data, this hasn't happened to me ... yet! In case you're
interested, I've used Verbatim (my favourite), Maxell, Wabash and Memorex.
{ENGLAND}!ukc!root44!west44!westf!gurr
{ENGLAND}!ukc!root44!west44!gurr
{ENGLAND}!ukc!lmcl <- by far the quickest, but please ask for your
item to be forwarded.
Dave Gurr, Westfield College, London.