Data on a 3.5 diskette

[Gordon]

But you never quote a spec on times played. You simply present your
emotions.
How many times can a cassette be played?

IDIOT. What don't you understand about "the length of life is in DIRECT
proportion to how often the tape is played" Of COURSE there's no
"definitive" life span - IT DEPENDS ON HOW OFTEN THE TAPE IS USED!!!!!!!!!

I've had enough of your stupidity.

Plonk.

 

[Unknown]

What you fail to recognize, or won't admit, is that there is a specification
on life expectancy based on
times used. But rather than quoting the figure you revert to name calling.
I've had enough of your emotional outbursts.

PLONK

 

[choro]

But you never quote a spec on times played. You simply present your
emotions.
How many times can a cassette be played?

Your argument is stupid, if I may say so. That depends on the quality of the
tape machine the tape is played on. I would say there would be an enormous
difference between the wear and tear on the tape played on a dirt cheap
machine as opposed to a Nakamichi Dragon, for example. Don't you think so?

 

[Gordon]

Your argument is stupid, if I may say so. That depends on the quality of
the tape machine the tape is played on. I would say there would be an
enormous difference between the wear and tear on the tape played on a dirt
cheap machine as opposed to a Nakamichi Dragon, for example. Don't you
think so?

Probably but the length of time the tape is usable is STILL directly
proportional to how often it's used....

 

[Unknown]

You don't understand proportions either. Playing on a Nakamichi Dragon may
be 50,000 times. Playing
on a dirt machine may be 2000 times. That could be 15 years versus 3 years.

 

[Terry R.]

On 3/9/2010 9:32 AM On a whim, Gordon pounded out on the keyboard

Rubbish - of COURSE it doesn't. All magnetic media such as Audio cassettes,
8 track (which is just a special form of cassette), VHS cassettes, when they
are plaid they CONTACT the playing head. When this happens a minute part of
the surface of the tape is removed by friction on the playing head. The life
expectancy of these magnetic TAPES is in direct proportion to how often they
are played. Play a VHS tape three times a day every day and it won't last
very long. Play a VHS tape once a year and it will ladst FAR longer.

8 track is not a "special form of cassette". 8 track is ONE reel, where
the tape is drawn from the inside and re-wound on the outside. That
constant rubbing from the tape being pulled from the inside made the
life expectancy very short compared to cassettes, which use a two reel
method like reel to reel tape machines.

More than friction damage from the heads, is the magnetic field that
develops when the tape is drawn across the head. That slowly
demagnetizes the tape, essentially erasing it over time.


Terry R.

 

[Gordon]

8 track is not a "special form of cassette". 8 track is ONE reel, where
the tape is drawn from the inside and re-wound on the outside. That
constant rubbing from the tape being pulled from the inside made the life
expectancy very short compared to cassettes, which use a two reel method
like reel to reel tape machines.

Thanks for that info - never had an 8 track, although I know several people
who have!

More than friction damage from the heads, is the magnetic field that
develops when the tape is drawn across the head. That slowly demagnetizes
the tape, essentially erasing it over time.

Thanks again - thinking back of course I remembered that, but it's SO long
ago since I used any sort of tape...

 

[Terry R.]

On 3/9/2010 12:07 PM On a whim, Gordon pounded out on the keyboard

Thanks for that info - never had an 8 track, although I know several people
who have!

4 tracks were based on the same design, but quickly died when the 8
track was able to store twice the material. The 4 track was two tracks
of stereo and the 8 track was four tracks of stereo. Since the 8 tracks
were so close together, cross-talk was much more prevalent than it was
using 4 tracks. You could literally move the case up and down ever so
slightly in the player and have the music change tracks.

Thanks again - thinking back of course I remembered that, but it's SO long
ago since I used any sort of tape...

You're welcome.

Terry R.

 

[Terry R.]

On 3/9/2010 11:43 AM On a whim, Unknown pounded out on the keyboard

You don't understand proportions either. Playing on a Nakamichi Dragon may
be 50,000 times. Playing
on a dirt machine may be 2000 times. That could be 15 years versus 3 years.

You're giving way too much credit to a machine that uses a typical tape
path to play. Regardless of the tape transport mechanism touted in the
ND, the tape damage doesn't come from forwarding and rewinding nearly as
much as it does from standard demagnetization caused from the tape head
coming in contact with the tape.

You can have a tape last just as long on a lower priced player if you
demagnetize and clean the heads/rollers frequently. Those are the two
single most killers of tape, regardless of whether it's 4/8 track,
cassette, or reel to reel.


Terry R.

 

[Billns]

I realize this may be somewhat old school, but I have a problem with
some data on a 3.5 diskette using WinXP. I put some personal data in a
'.xls' file on a 3.5 diskette and update it every now and then. The
other day when I put the disk in to enter some new data, I received the
following error msg: "book1.xls" cannot be accessed. The file may be
read-only, or you may be trying to access a read-only location. Or, the
server the document is stored on may not be responding. My options at
this point are "RETRY" or "CANCEL".

I check the disk drive with other diskettes to see if it worked with
them, and they opened fine. I copied another *.xls file to the diskette
to see if I could access it, and it worked fine. I had no problem
opening the 2nd xls file on the diskette. I ran error checking on the
disk, and it came up clean. I tried disk-copy with no luck either. Can
anyone help me with this, or advise me where I can get help?

Thank you!
Dennis

Interesting thread, but it sure got off topic quickly.
Gord Dibben is right, though, that you shouldn't read or write directly
to floppy disks from within Excel. If you can copy the file from the
diskette to the hard drive you may be able to access it.

As to life of components, I have diskettes from 20 years ago that are
still readable. I also have diskettes of more recent vintage that are
now unreadable. YMMV. I also have a couple of CD data disks that became
unreadable after only a year or two. And I have cassette tapes from 25
years ago that are still playable in my 1979 Ampex tape deck.

My 5 1/4-inch floppies are unreadable because they won't fit in my
3.5-inch drive. I used to remove these disks from their folders to show
my beginning computer class why they are called floppies. Nowadays they
probably wouldn't have any idea what I was talking about.

Bill

 

[Twayne]

In

Lat time I saw a PROGRAM that fitted on a floppy there were
24 of them......

That's the wonder and glory of the windows GUI: 800 Meg for pretty stuff and
200k of program data and it's just one program. But I do have several that
would fit on floppy: VB language.

 

[Twayne]

In

No idea where you get your specs. I have floppies over ten
years old and still working great.
Magnetic media? Disks can retain their data for many years.
Tapes? I have 8 tracks and cassettes
over 25 years old and still working.

You're either a liar, have very expensive hi Qual floppies and tapes kept in
an environmentally controlled room and they're never accessed (in which case
you can't know they're good), or haven't looked at them in over 8 years.
Those "specs" are very easy to find on the 'net, are well known (and vary
some but not by magnitudes or anything close to what you alleged) if you
want to look for them. I'll bet a floppy by floppy complete access test
comes up corrupted on most of them.

Twayne`

 

[Twayne]

In

Floppies are known to be rather fragile and they can fail
for no apparent reason but Twayne is making up stories
again. Like you I have floppies from the DOS/Windows 95
era (Chips Challenge, anyone?) and they are still good. Of
course, knowing that they are prone to fail at any given
time, if the floppies contain anything of value they should
be backed up to a more reliable media. Bottom line is yes,
floppies are fragile and they can fail in 15 minutes or in
15 years, there is no 1 year expiry date on them.

Of course not. But if you want to keep a store of floppies working for the
long term, those are the usual numbers that were used for the refrech
cycles. Your ignorance is only outshone by your complete lack of actual
experience with most things you talk about. YOu're an interesting clown if
nothing else.

Twayne

 

[Twayne]

In

Then you a) don't use them much and b) you have been
EXTREMELY lucky.



See above.

Every time you use a cassette and 8 track a little bit of
the surface is worn away. So you obviously hardly use them
at all.

Mmm, it's not actually the surface being "worn" away in properly functioning
drives as it is that: It has more to do with magnetic retentivity in the
thin oxide layer than anything else and of course care of the disks w/r to
heat, cold, stray fields near them, normal flux migration (rounding of
square waves) and the like, to put it simply.

Twayne`

 

[Twayne]

In

Quote specs not emotional gibberish. An 8 track or cassette
has a definite specification
as to life expectancy.

As do floppy disks in the same sense as 8 traciks and cassette players.
Each manufacturer used to toot their MTBF back when people still believed it
meant something real. I don't think they even bother to produce specs in
their ads anymore since there are very few new floppy manufacturers left.

 

[Twayne]

In

Rubbish - of COURSE it doesn't. All magnetic media such as
Audio cassettes, 8 track (which is just a special form of
cassette), VHS cassettes, when they are plaid they CONTACT
the playing head. When this happens a minute part of the
surface of the tape is removed by friction on the playing
head. The life expectancy of these magnetic TAPES is in
direct proportion to how often they are played. Play a VHS
tape three times a day every day and it won't last very
long. Play a VHS tape once a year and it will ladst FAR
longer.

They'll last very close to the same number of playbacks assuming proper care
over their lifetime.

 

[John John - MVP]

In

Of course not. But if you want to keep a store of floppies working for
the long term, those are the usual numbers that were used for the
refrech cycles. Your ignorance is only outshone by your complete lack of
actual experience with most things you talk about. YOu're an interesting
clown if nothing else.

You're quite a character, Twayne. Countless people will come and tell
you that they have 10+ year old floppies that still work perfectly and
still contains intact data yet you will treat them all of ignorants who
lack experience. No need for insults from me, Twayne, the countless
folks who still have these old floppies and who are reading this will
have far better fitting descriptions for you than I could ever think of.

John

 

[Bill in Co.]

You're quite a character, Twayne. Countless people will come and tell
you that they have 10+ year old floppies that still work perfectly and
still contains intact data yet you will treat them all of ignorants who
lack experience. No need for insults from me, Twayne, the countless
folks who still have these old floppies and who are reading this will
have far better fitting descriptions for you than I could ever think of.

John

But "those people" are all sock poppets. Don't you know that by now?

 

[Gordon]

You're quite a character, Twayne. Countless people will come and tell you
that they have 10+ year old floppies that still work perfectly and still
contains intact data

The problem is from my point of view (and experience) is that floppies are
completely erratic as to when they DO fail. My point in starting this was
that there are far more reliable and cheaper methods available to day for
data storage. I wouldn't dream of using a floppy today and if I had data on
floppies I would transfer it to one of the far more robust storage methods.

 

[John John - MVP]

The problem is from my point of view (and experience) is that floppies
are completely erratic as to when they DO fail. My point in starting
this was that there are far more reliable and cheaper methods available
to day for data storage. I wouldn't dream of using a floppy today and if
I had data on floppies I would transfer it to one of the far more robust
storage methods.

No arguments from anyone there, they are frail and they do fail,
sometimes they fail almost as soon as they come out of the box. We know
that they aren't the best storage media but Twayne's assertion that they
all fail in a year unless you do a Kabuki dance and refresh them is rubbish.

John