Magnetic medium

[E.T.]

Regarding the stability of floppies: I experienced recently the corruption of JPEG files on floppies. I realize [thanks PhotoJohn] that floppies record info magnetically, making them unstable ove the long haul.
"Q": Does the instability of floppies for holding data increase over time OR is the instability there from day one?
I use floppies for photo documentation of work & am concerned if I dont burn pics to CD immediately, I may loose them??

[Friend_Bear]

I can answer this question since I used to use them for many years when I was a happy Amiga 500 user :)

If you use good quality floppies you'll pretty much get about 2 years out of them before they start to degrade with read/write errors however, heavy use quickens this process as does poor handling of them such as leaving them exposed to sources of magatism etc..

Poor quality floppies have even less usage, some of my disks only managed about a year of minor to average use before developing dreaded error 8's (Amiga equivlent of throw the disk away :rolleyes: since its screwed)

If you're really worried about them, I suggest you possibly get a zip drive or something since there a lot more forgiving but the only advice I can give you really is to make sure you make multiple back-ups of your work, since you should never put all your eggs into one basket and any IT professional worth his salt and indeed his pay would tell you the same.

[Friend_Bear]

Bear in mind, there are exceptions to the rules though :p If you take good care of your disks, they could last much longer.

[E.T.]

<div class=\"smallfont\">Bear in mind, there are exceptions to the rules though :p If you take good care of your disks, they could last much longer.</div>


Thanks Friend Bear. Losing 22 priceless files on floppies has been lesson enough on backing up data.