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High Speed Floppy Drives?

Posted by Cliff on from the spending-an-eternity-swapping-floppies dept.

john asks: "I'm in a position where I may be "blessed" with the task of creating several hundred, even thousand, standard 1.44mb 3.5" floppy disks from a set of images. I'm curious if there exists a sort of "high speed" floppy drive available that would significantly speed up the time this process takes. Thanks!" Ouch! What about floppy copiers that are designed to copy floppies at high speed without the need for a computer?

20 comments

  1. make it SEP by h2odragon · · Score: 2

    I've never dealt with any of them but I've seen ads for disk duplication services that are equipped to do that already. ISTR their charges being something less than $0.25 over the cost of a raw floppy, and included labels for some of 'em.

    Is it possible to buy a reliable floppy anymore? I've got pre-1990 floppies that are still readable, but brand new ones in the same drives seem to develop bad spots in hours.

    1. Re:make it SEP by DaveHowe · · Score: 2

      Is it possible to buy a reliable floppy anymore? I've got pre-1990 floppies that are still readable, but brand new ones in the same drives seem to develop bad spots in hours.
      I find the formatting on pre-formatted disks just isn't up to spec anymore - they seem to be using some sort of high-speed formatter that doesn't leave a "deep" enough impression on the disk. Since I realised this and started doing a fresh low-level format on any "preformatted" disks I got, my error rate has gone down to the old levels....
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      -=DaveHowe=-
    2. Re:make it SEP by matthead · · Score: 1

      They're talking about a low-level format, guy.

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      -Matthead
    3. Re:make it SEP by Spoing · · Score: 3
      I find the formatting on pre-formatted disks just isn't up to spec anymore - they seem to be using some sort of high-speed formatter that doesn't leave a "deep" enough impression on the disk. Since I realised this and started doing a fresh low-level format on any "preformatted" disks I got, my error rate has gone down to the old levels....

      Who sells pre-formatted EXT2 diskettes? What? How else would you format them? :/

      --
      A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
    4. Re:make it SEP by Alien54 · · Score: 1
      All floppy formatting automatically includes low level formatting, the last time I checked.

      Hard drives are something else, of course

      --
      "It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
    5. Re:make it SEP by DaveHowe · · Score: 2

      They're talking about a low-level format, guy.
      You missed his Smiley ( :/ )
      a low level format used to be the default for floppies - still is if you use format a: /u :+)
      and of course he is correct - you can't buy preformatted EXT2 floppies, you would have to LLF them yourself (mind you, I tend to mount DOS floppies, can't be bothered to EXT2 format them)
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      -=DaveHowe=-
  2. why? by grammar+nazi · · Score: 1

    Everything can boot from a CDROM now. I wish my computer didn't have a floppy.

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    Keeping /. free of grammatical errors for ~5 years.
    1. Re:why? by AME · · Score: 2
      I wish my computer didn't have a floppy.

      It doesn't have to.
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      --
      "I have a good idea why it's hard to verify programs. They're usually wrong." --Manuel Blum, FOCS 94
    2. Re:why? by yakfacts · · Score: 1

      Floppy disks are still a handy way of transporting 5M of data. I use them all the time. There is some information I cannot transmit over a network (or don't want to wait for modem delays) and floppies are the easiest way. If you don't like your floppy, remove it. Good luck loading the configuration program for your network card.

    3. Re:why? by luckykaa · · Score: 1

      Everything can boot from a CDROM now.

      My old 486 couldn't even if it had a CD-ROM drive. I can install a lot of OSes over the network, but I need a floppy to get started.

    4. Re:why? by stilwebm · · Score: 1

      Ooo 23 free floppies What are you going to do with those free 32MB of storage that is read at 0.5Mbps?

    5. Re:why? by j-pimp · · Score: 1

      Well however you got an OS on the computer you can get drivers on it that same way.

      --
      --- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
    6. Re:why? by yakfacts · · Score: 1

      Use them to take data to work (and thus avoid the damn proxy server), move a copy of the network card module from one machine to another, backup my personal letters for safe keeping, move my presentation to the laptop without having to plug in the PCMCIA card, store almost any non-Windows card drivers in a compact format that can be put inside the manual and stored...I'm tired of typing, but could go on for days.

      So if you want to move 1Mb of data to a machine that does not have network access, you burn a CD? That is incredibly wasteful. I bet you had a $70-per-cartridge WORM drive on your NeXT, right? There are still a lot of uses for floppy disks and a lot of devices that ONLY come with a floppy. I suppose the disposable camera crowd likes getting three CDROMS in the mail from AOL every month, but I don't. And I find even a trained hippo is smart enough to split a file over three floppies. I know a lot of people who use ZIP disks and when I look on the disk they have 4MB worth of files...what a waste.

      Your speed argument makes little sense. True, CDROMS are faster. But I use the floppy medium like CDs--to store and move data. Not to run it. I can't use CDs for this either. They are too slow and as a RO device pretty silly. It takes me time to find a CD or floppy and load it in the drive, why not just sit tight while waiting a couple seconds for the data to copy off.

    7. Re:why? by yakfacts · · Score: 1

      My point is that there is little reason to use 650M of CDROM to release drivers that take 1M of space. I just installed 24 network cards. Each card came with a floppy containing the drivers. Had each one come with a CDROM, I would have thrown 23 pieces of polycarbonate into the trash. With floppy disks, I get 23 free floppies (keeping one, you see) and I can load the drivers on to any system with ease.

  3. What a job.... by yakfacts · · Score: 3

    Assuming you still have to create these things yourself, there are several disk duplicators available that take a stack of floppy disks in through a magazine, automatically load the data, verify and spit 'em out.

    Here are a couple I found on the web:
    copypro makes a professional duplicator, and this is a cheaper model from Tops-Mate. I would also check magazines like Nuts and Volts. Once upon a time Computer Shopper was full ads for products like this as well, but it is just PC stuff anymore.
  4. Disk duplication services by sfjohnson · · Score: 1

    A number of the diskette duplication houses also make limited-run CD-ROMs from masters or from a collection of diskettes; some prefer that you just FTP the data and art-work images to them. In very low quantities, they may burn individual "green" CDs (you could too). At these quantities, they may ink-jet print a label directly onto the CD. At higher quantities, they'll mass-produce the CD in the familiar silver, and the artwork is screen-printed. It's the usual inverse relationship between quantity and per-unit cost (probably no surprise to see just how inexpensive CD duplication is in quantity).

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    Live in the Future; It's Just Starting Now!
  5. Re:LS120 by CNERD · · Score: 1

    LS120 drives are slightly faster than normal floppy drives at reading and writing floppys. According to Imation they are 2x the speed of the average floppy drive. And they are IDE so you could have 3 of these on a signle computer(or 4 if you net-boot or something).

  6. LS120 by Quijybo · · Score: 1

    LS120 drives are slightly faster than normal floppy drives at reading and writing floppys.

    --
    Life is paradoxically coincidental to the ironical tyranny acceptable to the unparalleled defintion of reverse entropy.
  7. Outsource by funkman · · Score: 1

    If you can talk to the right people. I bet it can be done cheaper than wasting your time doing that. (Unless that is your job, than I am sorry for you)

  8. They're not that stable though. by klaussm · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately they seem to break down if they're used heavily. I have a Panasonic drive now that works, but the first one (also a Panasonic) lasted only a month, before it wouldn't read any floppies. The same thing happened to my friend's, and the two at my school. It seems as if they're unable to determine if it's a LS120 disk or a normal floppy, unless you fiddle a bit with the disk.

    The new one have lasted almost a year now, but I haven't used it half as much as the old one.