Unknown, you may already know, but ... floppies lose their magnetic
properties over time (thus they become unusable or the data corrupts). It
starts at about two month point depending on the quality and age of the
floppy, usually being closer to 6 months for el-cheapos and around a year
for higher quality with good care. Before data corrupts, I mean.
To prevent that, it is best to copy them to CD/DVD for long term storage.
it is quick & easy to make a new floppy.
The way to keep the floppy "refreshed" is to copy all the data off it to
your hard drive and then simply copy all the data back to the floppy. In
business, we used to do that monthly. I'd still do it monthly if I wanted a
floppy to persist for the long term. But do not let the floppy be the only
copy of the files; back them up too so you can always make another floppy.
In the real world, I discovered a cache of about 100 floppies, some with
some interesting files on them, and after over 5 years, still managed to get
the data off over 55% of them. I was astonished! The software I used was a
100-pass program: It would try to read the data 100 times and then pick the
sequence with the same identical data per try, and if it was over a certain
number, call that the "data". It was surprisingly accurate for some of the
play with sometimes.
HTH,
Twayne`
Unknown <unknown@unknown.kom> typed:
--
--
Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered
through personal experience does not become a
part of the moral tissue.