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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?

6 of 20 comments (clear)

  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 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? :/

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      A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
    3. 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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  2. 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.
  3. 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