The Disappearing Floppy Disk

by Dick Estel

Experiments with sun, microwave and freezing have shown that the floppy disk is pretty sturdy--as long
as you have one. But the continued advances in the PC world do not bode well for users of antiquated
media. It is getting harder and harder to find double-sided, double-density 5.25 inch floppies. 

I have not seen them in stores for some time (in fact, 5.25 disks of any type are becoming a thing of the
past, as current model PC's use only 3.5" disks).

LOADSTAR, surely the last major user of 5.25 disks, recently lost their last supplier, and had to resort
to recycled disks (not used in the sense that they had been loaded and handled, but not new in the
sense that they were unsold program disks). Not long ago I saw an ad for disks for 19 cents each from
a Commodore user in Canada with whom I've corresponded for several years. When I contacted him
by Email, he had sold all his disks--to LOADSTAR! 

Another supplier is Ed Hart in the Bay Area, who acquired a large number of disks of both sizes a
couple of years ago. When I talked to him in early May, he was down to about 1,000 disks. He was
charging 10 cents at that time. If LOADSTAR hears of this, how long do you think that supply will last?
(I purchased 100 of each size, the 3.5's for myself and the others for the club). 

Most of us have acquired oodles of programs and files we don't use, and have dozens or hundreds of
floppy disks that are carefully (or not so carefully) stored somewhere. Recycling these may well be the
best and possibly only source of disks in the not-so-distant future.

The 3.5 format may not be around all that long either. Double-density disks can be used on PC's but
are no longer the standard. And even the high-density disks which have 1.44 megabytes are falling out
of favor, with newer programs creating ever larger files. A 3" by 4" photo, scanned at 150 dots per inch
and saved in a high quality format on the PC can run over one megabyte. No one wants to store files
one to a disk. So PC users are turning to newer disk formats that start with a 100-megabyte capacity.

There should be quite a few 3.5 DD disks, and a huge supply of 3.5 HD disks for some time to come.
The latter can be used on CMD's FD 2000 drive; this may be a good way to go if you anticipate a
long-term need for significant storage capacity. If you are using your Commodore at the basic level for
a bit of word processing and playing around with GEOS, you probably have your own stock in the
form of disks you haven't touched for years.

From "The Interface," newsletter of Fresno Commodore User Group 

(Recommended companion article: "The Indestructible Floppy Disk," available in the Commodore
Information Center Article Index)