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Copy That Floppy – Cambridge guide for preserving data from fragile floppy disks

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Re: Copy That Floppy – Cambridge guide for preserving data from fragile floppy disks

#71

Post by bartread »

amiga386 wrote: post #58
bartread wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa, wait, what? It can? I did not know that. Back in the day I had an A500, and only bought the 1200 decades later. Had no idea it would accept HD floppies. TIL. Thank you!

It can't. The GP is mistaken. The stock A1200 floppy drive cannot read/write HD disks, though you can format most HD disks as DD and physically use them as DD (depending on the brand of floppy disk; back in the late 1990s I used to buy HD floppies because they were the only ones I could easily get, and they were cheaply made and weren't all that reliable on the Amiga, but became more reliable when formatted as HD in…

Ah, that's slightly disappointing. Although, realistically, when it comes to Amiga I only have DD floppies anyway.

Re: Copy That Floppy – Cambridge guide for preserving data from fragile floppy disks

#72

Post by ralphc »

felooboolooomba wrote: post #28

As a kid back then, floppies were expensive if you were using your pocket money or hard earned side hustle stash. Floppies were used, abused and reused until that dreadful bad sector. Even after the bad sector if you knew its location. But you knew the floppy time was up. Kids today will newer know the feeling of unwrapping a fresh package of 10 floppies. The sound, the smell, the texture, the stickers, the formattin…

The stickers that wrapped around the edge of the floppy and would never stay stuck...

Re: Copy That Floppy – Cambridge guide for preserving data from fragile floppy disks

#73

Post by llsf »

Oh memories of stacking those, and going to my friend's place to copy the latest games :) Remember how we were drilling holes to doubled the disk's storage capacity (from 720 to 1440) https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=47247

Before the floppy disks we were using cassettes... with our TO7 (circa 1983). It was slow by our current measure, but as kids we had time, I guess. The TO7 had even a lightpen to point at the CRC screen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomson_TO7

My parents attic has still some of my old floppy disks, and even maybe some cassettes.

Re: Copy That Floppy – Cambridge guide for preserving data from fragile floppy disks

#74

Post by russdill »

AkBKukU wrote: post #44

I do a lot of floppy imaging and some of my work on it has previously be discussed here[1]. I do not understand where they got the idea of "there are a number of disks that the Greaseweazle struggles to capture, namely the Apple formatted disks. If you have these disks in your collection, you may need to use an Applesauce controller." The Applesauce is a macOS exclusive tool that has a contingent of dedicated users.…

The apple 2 5.25 drive does quarter track steps. I think this may be the issue.

Re: Copy That Floppy – Cambridge guide for preserving data from fragile floppy disks

#75

Post by amiga386 »

jandrese wrote: post #5
mune2gu-chan wrote: post #2

It's easy to forget that preserving digital data often comes down to keeping aging physical media alive. Nice practical guide.

Generally it's easier to just copy the data to each new media as you adopt it. In the past this was pretty easy to do as the hard drive held way more data than the floppy disks of old. The next hard drive was an order of magnitude larger than the old one, and so on. Unfortunately this sputtered out during the SSD transition and became even more ephemeral as people started putting data in the cloud where it will event…

> Unfortunately this sputtered out during the SSD transition

I advise people to backup their data (emails, writings, pictures, photos, home videos, phone contents, etc.) and worry about their music/TV/film/game collection later.

Most people's personal data collection doesn't run into dozens of terabytes, while most people's media collection does.

You can get portable 5TB HDDs, one or two of them is usually more than enough for most people's own files. Plug them in and backup regularly, e.g. monthly, they last a lot longer that way than if you backup once and throw them in the cupboard.

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