Thomas Tabler wrote:
>
> Dear List:
>
> Perhaps my imagination, but this is now the second or third
> manufacturer of floppy diskettes I have tried, with no success.
> My floppy disk drive will not read them. Especially bad if I
> decide to save a small download to a floppy rather than the
> hard drive. To all out there: will the AT users of the world
> unite and demand a decent floppy disk?? Or is Superdrive/Iomega
> zip drive the only way to go? Help.
Rather than the diskettes it's likely that the culprit is your disk drive.
Most (read ALL) new floppy drives are crap. A 10 year old drive is very
likely to be still operational and aligned, but possibly in need of a
head cleaning while I have to toss the newer ones out every couple of
months if I try to use them. :(
Sometimes I get less than 10 hours of actual use (rotation) from them
and the low record is 4 hours. (over the period of a single month)
These are brand-new drives of the grade that commonly gets installed in
a new PC. (Fujitsu, Mitsumi, Panasonic) Prices are 20-30 $CAD.
In contrast, I find budget grade diskettes from Future Shop (25 for 5 $CAD)
are fine, although about 1 in 10 is formatted at an alignment that gives
my current (crap) disk drives trouble. The solution is to bulk erase and
reformat to your current alignment, and hope it will work in your next drive.
:(((
Sort of like the tracking alignment problems some VCRs have with standard
rented tapes while your own tapes play fine.
- Clarence Verge
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