Ouch, that's rather a lot to wade through. Hey, throw them all on an open server and let google itself have a go at them. Shouldn't take more than a couple of months. Then use google advanced syntax to find whatever it is.
- YD.
-- Remove HAT if replying by mail.
Hello Keith,
I did not have one that failed in over two decades. But I always bought top grade floppies from good name brands. None of this "holiday special bulk pack" stuff. Everything was copied with verify turned on. Takes longer but worth the peace of mind.
With modern media that is different. I have encountered a few CDs that delaminated and a few that were reported bad upon insertion. Then there were memory stick freezes. During write Windows just sat there with that dreaded hour glass and the progress bar was, well, not progressing. Only a hard reset (power switch) could get it out.
Regards, Joerg
I found the opposite. I had many packs of brand-name floppys with a 50% failure rate after a few days. IMO, during the '80s they weren't too bad but got progressively worse though the '90s. I wouldn't put any data on floppys, though do use them for flashing BIOS, booting DOS for maintenance utilities (e.g. PQMagic), and the like.
I've had CDs that were DOA too, but once written and verified they've been pretty good. Flash sticks just work, though I haven't used hundreds of them, by any means.
-- Keith
On Windows, XCOPY in a DOS box does a pretty good job of mass file transfers, with options for just about anything you'd want to do. Try it. (Note: XCOPY in a DOS box is *not* the same as the same command after booting the same machine into MS-DOS mode.)
Other than XCOPY disk-to-disk transfers to a mirror drive, preserving long file names for backups under Windows is a headache I have yet to really solve. I save data sheets (and other documents) with descriptive file names, e.g. "electr\\data\\opamps\\LM324 (quad bipolar
3-32Vcc 1MHz dip14).pdf".Copying to CD-R truncates these filenames, as does copying over a network, and, under XP, copying to CD changes all the files' time/date stamps to the time/date *of the CD's creation.* All the above fail to copy filenames with apostrophes and various other allowed characters in the file name, substituting "_" instead. That an operating system should presume to adulterate filenames and update date stamps is, to me, is unimaginable, inconceivable...yet Windows does.
James Arthur
I bought, loaded, and compared six or seven document management programs some 8 or 9 years back. PaperPort was, simply put, fabulous. It did what it was supposed to do, and, most wonderfully, allowed me to flip pages of a document pretty much as quickly as flipping the pages in a book.
I've got many thousands of pages scanned, and it's awfully handy to be able to back up and carry the lot on a single CD.
Pagis (by Xerox, now ScanSoft), by contrast, was possibly the worst software product it has ever been my misfortune to encounter, and I don't say that lightly. The highly-touted format-preserving OCR made streams of ASCII-gook from even the highest quality scans, and many of the other features (such as database wide searches by content) simply didn't ever work at all. "Flipping" pages: the disk thrashes, an editor window opens, and then is dog-slow, making electronic docs much slower than paper to peruse, which cripples the main point of the paperless thing. The program injected itself into Windows Explorer, causing WE to be as unreliable and crash-prone as Pagis. Absolute crap.
PaperPort was since purchased by the ScanSoft-borg, but I don't know how it's fared--I'm still using my same old original copy, and still love it.
James Arthur
Windows still mucks up this translation. Depending on the order the files are copied the SFNs may change causing all sorts of registry grief.
I use Partition Magic or similar. There are other programs that don't mess up the LFN->SFN translation.
Surprised?
-- Keith
Bastards. I started to write a BASIC kludge that does a DIR *.*
and another kludge to copy the backup off CD and restore the names. Never finished it, figuring to just buy something...
Sadly PartitionMagic doesn't get along with the little gadget Maxtor loaded onto my boot sector. There are instructions on circumventing this, but they don't work. And heavens knows I've tried!
Yeah, actually. Microslosh can promulgate their low-quality wares--that's fine with me--but messing with my data, that makes it personal.
James Arthur
Hello James,
'tis why I do not use file names with prefixes longer than 8 characters or suffixes longer than 3. Keeps a lot of problems out of the house.
Regards, Joerg
Hello Keith,
I kind of had a hunch this would happen so I bought a huge stash of
3-1/2" floppies in the 80's. So many that it still lasts. I did the same with some electronic parts and I am sure glad I did :-)
Flash sticks are ok but quite slow in writing. Same with CDs. Originally CD-RW was touted as the next floppy. Didn't happen for me, they are way too slow. Nothing beats zipping a file or two on to a floppy and place it in the brief case.
Regards, Joerg
"Joerg" schreef in bericht news:dMy2g.63203$F snipped-for-privacy@newssvr29.news.prodigy.net...
Flash sticks are *much* faster than floppies. Copying 1.44MB to a flash stick is just a few seconds or less. And the 128MB ones you practically get for free these days. No need for zipping either, in most cases.
-- Thanks, Frank. (remove \'q\' and \'.invalid\' when replying by email)
I have a little over 1000 of each 0f the 5.25" and the 3.5" floppies still sealed in the shipping material.
-- Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I\'ve got my DD214 to prove it. Member of DAV #85. Michael A. Terrell Central Florida
Huh? Flash sticks write 100x faster than floppys. 400Mb/s is a whole lot faster than a floppy. Ok, they aren't quite as fast as USB, but still a *lot* faster than a floppy. ...not to mention a useful size for 2006. Floppys are tiny, and *SLLLLOOOOWWW*.
-- Keith
Hello Keith,
Ok, flash sticks might be faster in the actual write cycle than a floppy. However, mine froze quite often and then the PC just sits there with the progress bar etched onto the screen. Never happened with a floppy.
Regards, Joerg
Hello Michael,
Wow. I didn't go that far. About 100 in my case.
Regards, Joerg
"Joerg" schreef in bericht news:xsR2g.71136$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr25.news.prodigy.net...
floppy.
Are you sitting on a landfill with uranium or something, I really don't understand why you have some many problems with your PC gear.
;)
-- Thanks, Frank. (remove \'q\' and \'.invalid\' when replying by email)
I only paid $100 for 1000 3.5" floppies, and $16.50 for 1100 5.25" floppies. ;-)
-- Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I\'ve got my DD214 to prove it. Member of DAV #85. Michael A. Terrell Central Florida
You must have a really crappy computer. I've *never* had a flash stick "hang". I've had *many* (many, many, many,...) floppys that couldn't be read after even a day. Even so, I'd far prefer the media tell me it didn't like me on a write than a read. Come on, Joerg! Flash sticks are the cat's ass of portable storage.
-- Keith
Hello Keith,
Well, it's of course not a huge test population but I have seen it on three very different computers and several flash sticks (various mfgs). We just have had almost the opposite experiences.
When I copy to disks I keep verify on. For example, once I tried to copy some not so important stuff onto a floppy and it immediately beeped at me. I looked at the floppy which was an old one containing a software I didn't need anymore. For some reason it had formatted ok. Sure enough there was a teeny hole in there, obviously one of those really old age copy protection schemes.
But you are right, flash is "the" portable media these days. Can't beat their size. IMHO it's just not as reliable as I'd wish. Once I called a stick mfg when hanging occurred a bit much for my taste. They said it happens once in a while and that I should format the stick and it'll be ok. It was, but I had to do that more than once.
Regards, Joerg
Hello Frank,
Who knows. Sad story but true, it just happened: A guy here in the area sat in his basement living room when suddenly the floor gave way and a
10 foot deep hole appeared. It swallowed and crushed him. Could be an old mine shaft, they don't know yet.Some of the PC crashes happen after I was too impatient. There is a reason people call Windows "Windoze". It's claimed to be multi-task capable but in reality that is rather limited. So sometimes I keep on typing not realizing that the letters don't make it onto the screen. That's usually when it goes south. DOS does not have that problem and that's the OS I grew up with. Windows came later like the automatic transmission (which, of course, I do not have in my car) :-)
Regards, Joerg
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