Answer by U. Windl for How long can a floppy disk spin for before wearing out?
I think actual wear depends on the finish of the head as well as the material of the floppies. In addition the actual "dirt state" of the head may be important as well as the cleanness of the...
View ArticleAnswer by luiscolorado for How long can a floppy disk spin for before wearing...
In the 80's, 360K 5.25" disks for PC were highly reliable. I did not have a hard drive, and compiling C and COBOL would make them work hard. I used them mostly without problems for months or longer....
View ArticleAnswer by Karl Bielefeldt for How long can a floppy disk spin for before...
I never trusted one for longer than about half a semester. I worked in a university computer lab back when 3.5 inch floppies were how students saved everything. Each student had 10 MB of "private...
View ArticleAnswer by Raffzahn for How long can a floppy disk spin for before wearing out?
Anecdotal evidence (*1)We had a bank as customer with branch offices all over the state. These were the 70s, the final years of batch only, although, already using remote batch with local data...
View ArticleAnswer by Graham Nye for How long can a floppy disk spin for before wearing out?
As I understand it, the head rubs against the disk and the disk rubsagainst the shell/sleeve when in operation.Correct. But the head is only rubbing against the disk when data are being transferred...
View ArticleAnswer by Simon27 for How long can a floppy disk spin for before wearing out?
My 1980 edition of the Apple II DOS manual mentions that, for a 5.25" disk:With reasonable care a diskette will give you an average life of 40 hours——which is a lot, when you consider the few seconds...
View ArticleAnswer by cup for How long can a floppy disk spin for before wearing out?
Can't really put a figure on it. I've had the same disk in a portable USB 3.5" drive for 5 years which I used for installing licence keys on numerous machines and uploading to a database.Doesn't this...
View ArticleAnswer by Armand for How long can a floppy disk spin for before wearing out?
I did some assembly development on a dual-floppy (5 1/4" double-sided) IBM PC 5150 in 1982/83 (PC DOS 1.1 and onward). Boy, did that exercise the floppy drives! We wore out floppies all the time and...
View ArticleAnswer by hugseirvak for How long can a floppy disk spin for before wearing out?
According to this the floppy disk can last 3-5 years and up to 20 years. I have lots of floppy diskettes including the ones from an old Macintosh computer but some are already non-working and probably...
View ArticleHow long can a floppy disk spin for before wearing out?
I'm mainly interested in 3.5" floppies here, as they're what I have lying around, but other sizes could also be interesting to hear about if anyone has the data.As I understand it, the head rubs...
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