Favorite diskette brands?

[+Larry]

There were lots to choose from, especially when they were $20 for a box of ten SS/SD diskettes! We payed through the nose at the beginning of this journey!

 

My favorite 5-1/4" was 3M (Now Imation) DS/QD. They had a nice stiff shell that didn't warp or otherwise deform easily. Also, a wonderful surface polish on the media. Also Sony 3-1/2" (DS/DD) were/are definitely great. I don't believe I ever had one fail, and they were very reliable, even when formatted to 1.44.

 

If properly stored, the good ones seem to last and last.

 

But there were lots of other good brands -- what were your favorites?

 

-Larry

[Curt Vendel]

I always liked Elephant diskettes, TDK's though seemed to be the best at the time and the prices were pretty good.

 

 

 

Curt

 

There were lots to choose from, especially when they were $20 for a box of ten SS/SD diskettes! We payed through the nose at the beginning of this journey!

 

My favorite 5-1/4" was 3M (Now Imation) DS/QD. They had a nice stiff shell that didn't warp or otherwise deform easily. Also, a wonderful surface polish on the media. Also Sony 3-1/2" (DS/DD) were/are definitely great. I don't believe I ever had one fail, and they were very reliable, even when formatted to 1.44.

 

If properly stored, the good ones seem to last and last.

 

But there were lots of other good brands -- what were your favorites?

 

-Larry

[JR>]

I always liked the Elephants too. Now I've found that most of my disks that have since failed turn out to be the elephants

[Ross PK]

I only bought disks on one occasion which were called or by a company called 'Sellect', I spotted them in the Argos catalogue and I think I bought two packs of ten.

 

I don't think I had them for that long, maybe 2, 3, or 4 years at the most, but I never had any problems with them during that time.

[+bf2k+]

I liked the Verbatims (the true DSDD w/hub ring). Never had one fail on my A8 stuff... still got them all.

[Pengwin]

I had mainly TDK or 3M. Most them are still ok today, but the unbranded disks I bought have nearly all given up on me.

[SpicyChronos]

My dad and I always liked the Fuji Film ones. Then we found a Quill catalog and we started bulk ordering the disks in 100 lots. I was a big ol' copier back in the day.

[S1500]

My first box of disks was from a brand called Bonus, for my TI-99/4A. After several months, every single one of them failed.

[Prodos8]

My first box of disks was from a brand called Bonus, for my TI-99/4A. After several months, every single one of them failed.

The Bonus brand were the cheap/rejected (what I've heard anyway) Verbatim/Datalife disks. I still have a few, but they all seem to work. I think the most failures I experienced were with Maxell & Sony brand. I dind't really care about the brand as long as it held the data. I liked the muli-color disks though, I think Fuji came out with those first.

[jaybird3rd]

Well, almost all of my old 5.25-inch Atari diskettes still work, so I suppose they were all good, but the ones I've had the best luck with have been Verbatim, SKC, and Elephant brand diskettes. The few that have failed have all been Maxell disks, but I've got a lot of other Maxells that are still working, too.

[Fres]

Yeah, I liked the multi-color Fuji disks. They came in durable plastic boxes too. Good for transporting several disks at a time.

[LYNXGUY]

I never heard of elephant disks ??

 

I like. . . . . . .

 

Verbatim

 

Memorex

 

TDK

 

BASF

 

I prefer Maxell over all

 

My best friend likes Memtek and 3M

[carmel_andrews]

Never realy bothered me what brand of diskettes i used...just as look as they worked with my various 1050's i had way back when

[+Roydea6]

Another brand is Dysan, but I mostly bought the Bonus brand..

 

[+Larry]

Another brand is Dysan, but I mostly bought the Bonus brand..

 

 

I think that for grins, I'll go through a couple of boxes of my 5-1/4" disks and list the various brands that I find. I'll bet there are some obscure names in there!

 

One thing that always surprised me was the poor surface finish on Atari brand media -- looked like they were polished with steel wool! Okay, maybe not quite that bad...

 

-Larry

[Urchlay]

I think that for grins, I'll go through a couple of boxes of my 5-1/4" disks and list the various brands that I find. I'll bet there are some obscure names in there!

 

I remember back in the day, my friend and I got hold of some no-name bulk diskettes for super-cheap, and they didn't come with dust jackets...

 

I took an Opus disk jacket, cut it at the seams, folded it out flat, and ran off a couple hundred copies on my high school's Xerox (was free, back then)... then we spent a few hours with scissors and tape, cutting and folding the copies into dust jackets. We ended up with "ghetto" looking floppy disk collections, but surprisingly most of those no-name disks are still readable today.

[FastRobPlus]

I agree Elephants are BAD! They have not held up well at all. Maybe during the 80's they were fine, but I have amassed so many other people's collections that I've had a chance to try just about every make of disk several times over from different collections. The Elephants are the worst of the name brand disks.

 

This is a cool thread - I may be am strange, but I love reading old magazines and enjoy the... Disk Wars? Not sure what to call them. From 80-85, and peaking in 83 it was common for the letters page and the special sections pages of magazines to be filled with advice and stories about the care an maintenance of disks and drives. Much of the advice seems obsessive nowadays. Tips like cleaning the drive before beginning and ending your computing session were common. Disk ads were major back then. I think we can all remember the Elephant disks dominating the back cover of a lot of magazines.

 

Do you remember the Allenbach disks? It's futuristic ads said something like "It's 1983. Allenbach disks will still be warranted in 2083." Hmm... are they really? Who do I call today if I have a bad one?

 

I also loved the 1-3 page rambling stream of thought type ads (similar to the DAK catalog if you remember that) - where the owner of a mail order house would write paragraph after rambling paragraph about how their generic brand disks are "Shhh! Just as good as the name brands, but cheaper because we don't have the marketing and overhead!"

 

I also remember an ad from one company that sold disks where the front had a small round liquid crystal thermometer stuck to the disk jacket to let you know the ambient temperature and if it was safe to operate the disk. It bragged it was an environmental sensor (which I guess is true!) But did you really need your disk to tell you if it was around room-temperature in your computer room?

 

In late '83, Creative Computing compiled a list of reader top questions and sent them to a dozen or more of the name brand disk manufacturers. Of these, only two companies replied: Verbatim and Maxell. That may be a good indication of what companies actually backed their disks. I can't remember the Q&A, but I remember that both agreed that you should store the disks vertically in thier sleeves, not bend them, etc. Verbatim if I remember said the service life was "30 years" and Maxell said it was "virtually forever"

Edited February 15, 2008 by FastRobPlus

[Fletch]

I always like Elephant Memory Systems. I probably just liked the free Elephant sticker to be honest.

[Almost Rice]

I have had Elephant, Verbatim, Fuji, Bonus, and Atari Dos 3. Dos 3 was the last ones I bought since I got 100 of them and never needed more than that. I still have a few sealed packs.

[Allas]

I preferred KODAK diskettes and the very cheap PRESICION diskettes. I remember to have problems with each MEMOREX and VERBATIM i have, because the internal disk can't spin with the time.

Edited February 15, 2008 by Allas

[Lord Thag]

My favorite are whatever I can still find at Salvation Army

 

I agree that the Elephant and TDK disks are rock solid. Most of my original games from my childhood stash that are on those still work. The Verbatim ... not so much.

[LYNXGUY]

My favorite are whatever I can still find at Salvation Army

 

I like Goodwill myself and I did find 15 floppy Diskettes in a plastic case that holds 50 diskettes for $5

[1050]

I remember buying Generic floppies for $10 per box of 10. An all white box, not a single printed symbol or letter to be found anywhere and the supplied labels were gummy as all get out, but they still read today. Some of the labels did dry up and fall off though. I haven't seen anything Generic for sale for so long now it all seems like a really bad dream I had forgotten about, kinda like the economy of the 70's or somesuch. Ohh, man, spending really good money on those Generic floppies when things were so squeaky tight it really hurt, what a flashback.

 

I eventually collected someone's huge setup of 800s and got over a dozen boxes of Bonus diskettes in the deal with no real troubles from them so far, so now I'm set for years to come. 15 years ago or so, I called the 1-800 3M diskette hotline to find that it was still manned and active. The guy on the other end of the phone said that the big makers like 3M, Maxell, Verbatim, Sony all had to take turns in rotations of several months at a time filling orders for those "old" Medium Density diskettes for the Department of Defense on an "as needed" basis, even 8 inchers too. Only if there were extras and only if the DoD didn't mind and if my wallet were big enough, I might be able to snag some new ones but otherwise, no chance.

 

I was a big fan of the rainbow Verbatims though, it was so very easy to keep track of where the files I wanted were at. I still know the contents of some of those disks on sight - what a system. I couldn't afford them new so I had to settle for second hand ones and I can't even remember how I managed to come across them used, but I did at least for a couple boxes of them. Strangely Goodwill and the like were never a good source for me, rarely did I ever find a box of ten for example, then or now, and I haven't seen any for years. One time I did find some, I ponied right up and took them all home only to find a disk in there that I had given to the local Atari club librarian and it was MINE with my name and files still on it!! This in a city of 150,000. He must have kept the library of 300 or so disks for himself and just unloaded the stinkers when the 8-bit club folded up for good. AIM magazine, club members, the Atari Disk Of the Month (DOM), and pricey generic floppies, what a collection of stirred up memories I had totally forgotton about - again.

[+Larry]

I preferred KODAK diskettes and the very cheap PRESICION diskettes. I remember to have problems with each MEMOREX and VERBATIM i have, because the internal disk can't spin with the time.

 

Presume you've heard of the little trick of "stroking" the diskette edges across the edge of a "sharp" edge of a table. etc. to deform the jacket edges slightly and increase the clearance for the disk inside the liner? If done correctly, that helps a lot. Probably worth mentioning, since someone out there may not have run across this tip.

-Larry

[LYNXGUY]

I have a few BONUS floppies that still work and I recently got 140+ floppies from EBAY and I came across some new brand names I never heard of before.

 

Control Data

Quill

Hoffman

Pulse 1

 

Datalife Plus which I do recall and I even have a TANDY floppy too