Imation disks are right up there with TDK and Fuji disks in the "garbage disks you should never ever buy" list.
I've taken a brand new box of Imation disks, obtained from various sources both mail order and locally, attempted to re-format them on two different machines in my office, and every single time had at least 2 format with bad sectors (which then got dumped in the garbage), and at least one that was simply not able to be formatted. Nice.
And, before we get into the old floppy drive / dirty floppy drive / radiation / magnetic field arguements, the two machines are able to format a decent floppy fine, both floppy drives are "name brand", one a Mitsumi and the other a Teac, and one is just barely 6 months old right now. The drives (and PC's) are incredibly clean internally, with fewer dust-bunnies accumulating in them in 3 years than most PC's collect in 3 weeks, and are kept up on the desk off of the floor. And electromagnetic radiation realistically couldn't be lower, it's a very rural setting, in a metal building, vith little in the way of strong magnetic or EMI sources nearby. Cell phones? Umm, no, cell phones go out of service inside the building, so no one brings them in with them:)
Short and the long of it is, floppies are generally garbage and not to be trusted. It used to be that Sony and Verbatim floppies were pretty good, but I simply won't use floppies anymore. They only time I run into the need is the odd install disk or boot floppy, that's about it. Otherwise I move files about via Compact Flash card, which works great in my notebook, and with a CF reader bay in my PC. Alternately I move files via CDRW if it's a large amount of data.
Keep your hard disks at least mirrored (RAID, the only way to fly), backed up on tape (and kept cool, dry, away from magnetic fields, and in a certified media safe), and even occasionally backup data / source files (most people don't care about actual application backups, they can be re-installed / compiled) to a CDR. I keep my monthly CDR backups in a bank safe deposit box.
OK, now that I've gotten sufficiently off topic, I've seen USB Flask disk dongles available as of late, and if your labs are running Windows (which unfortunately they probably are), they should work quite well. Although Linux support for USB has made quantum leaps in the last 12 months, I couldn't speak as to wether or not these dongles would work there. You'd probably want to check with Matt Dharm on the Linux-USB list at SourceForge.
Yes, they're expensive, but they exceed your 8MB of desired storage capacity. Not the cheapest place to get them, but Cyberguys has a 16MB and 32MB version available.
Note that these units are claimed to be "100% USB Spec. 1.1 compatible", so they should be Linux compatible, but I'd still check with the Linux USB gurus.
... out of seeing the handful of posts NIT-PICKING the numeric versioning system thing.
And, since I haven't posted here for awhile, and so dislike people who nit-pick an issue simply to look intelligent, allow me to take the very same sentance and explain it to you:
"MontaVista would like to see this technology, or similar technology, utilized as a foundational feature of Linux 2.5,"
"... this technology, or similar technology", referring to the preemptive structure changes and coding they have been working on. Very cool, and I think everyone can follow it this far.
"... utilized as a foundational feature", meaning they would like to see these largish to major changes made early on, either all theirs, part theirs, worked on by them, others, or a better way, whatever works out to be the Best Thing for Linux. Again, seems fairly clear to me.
"... of Linux 2.5", meaning they would like to see it begin incorporation in Linux 2.5. This seems proper to me.
As I see it, it was stated correctly, a new, and fundamentally large change such as this would be inculded in a DEVELOPMENT kernel. Hence, the term DEVELOPMENT.
A large change like this would NOT get directly incorporated into a STABLE kernel series.
You're beef seems to be more of a grammatical one than anything else. Would Montavista stating it this way have satisfied you - "MontaVista would like to see this technology, or similar technology, utilized as a foundational feature at the beginning of Linux 2.5,"? Probably not.
Long ago, I read the explanation of the versioning system being used in Linux, and understood it. And ever since, I've gotten a chuckle out of anal-retentive grammatical nazi Slashdotters like yourself who feel the need to try and show the world that they know it too.
Get over it.
And now that I'm guilty of doing the exact same thing I so dislike here, I'm moving on before I end up conditioning myself to be guilty of it more often.
Filter by port -> Change ports
Filter by IP address -> Multihome or distribute database
Filter by content -> Hide or encrypt data
Shut down central database -> Restructure into distributed database
Granted, this sounds easy, and I'm no wizard at any of these issues (so don't nitpick and argue with me over it), but you get the point. Napster will die, two dozen more will appear, and each will address these single failure (or kill) points. It will simply continue to evolve, pure and simple.
Even though they may like to think so, they just don't HAVE that much control, and contrary to what they may think, the generally ignorant public, if even minimally informed, won't stand for that sort of data stream censorship.
Think about it - it's the classic definition of censorship. "You can't have it because it's wrong/bad for you/illegal/immoral/stupid/etc."
It just amazes and amuses me that the powers that be REFUSE to acknowledge that the Genie is out of the bottle. You can't undo it, you can't put it back in. It's over. Concentrate on developing a decent cross platform secure digital music format that allows for the distribution of music over the Internet, for a reasonable fee.
Mr. Heckler, what color is the sky in your world? What does it smell like there?
Even though I only control a handful of "fringe" routers for a small ISP I own, this is one company that won't be doing a thing to filter or censor content - EVER.
Time to sell/auction/retire/smash/burn/scrap my Sony A/V equipment? Starting to look like it.
Slashdot Mirror
Imation disks are right up there with TDK and Fuji disks in the "garbage disks you should never ever buy" list.
:)
I've taken a brand new box of Imation disks, obtained from various sources both mail order and locally, attempted to re-format them on two different machines in my office, and every single time had at least 2 format with bad sectors (which then got dumped in the garbage), and at least one that was simply not able to be formatted. Nice.
And, before we get into the old floppy drive / dirty floppy drive / radiation / magnetic field arguements, the two machines are able to format a decent floppy fine, both floppy drives are "name brand", one a Mitsumi and the other a Teac, and one is just barely 6 months old right now. The drives (and PC's) are incredibly clean internally, with fewer dust-bunnies accumulating in them in 3 years than most PC's collect in 3 weeks, and are kept up on the desk off of the floor. And electromagnetic radiation realistically couldn't be lower, it's a very rural setting, in a metal building, vith little in the way of strong magnetic or EMI sources nearby. Cell phones? Umm, no, cell phones go out of service inside the building, so no one brings them in with them
Short and the long of it is, floppies are generally garbage and not to be trusted. It used to be that Sony and Verbatim floppies were pretty good, but I simply won't use floppies anymore. They only time I run into the need is the odd install disk or boot floppy, that's about it. Otherwise I move files about via Compact Flash card, which works great in my notebook, and with a CF reader bay in my PC. Alternately I move files via CDRW if it's a large amount of data.
Keep your hard disks at least mirrored (RAID, the only way to fly), backed up on tape (and kept cool, dry, away from magnetic fields, and in a certified media safe), and even occasionally backup data / source files (most people don't care about actual application backups, they can be re-installed / compiled) to a CDR. I keep my monthly CDR backups in a bank safe deposit box.
OK, now that I've gotten sufficiently off topic, I've seen USB Flask disk dongles available as of late, and if your labs are running Windows (which unfortunately they probably are), they should work quite well. Although Linux support for USB has made quantum leaps in the last 12 months, I couldn't speak as to wether or not these dongles would work there. You'd probably want to check with Matt Dharm on the Linux-USB list at SourceForge.
Yes, they're expensive, but they exceed your 8MB of desired storage capacity. Not the cheapest place to get them, but Cyberguys has a 16MB and 32MB version available.
16MB, $69.95 USD - Here
32MB, $129.00 USD - Here
Note that these units are claimed to be "100% USB Spec. 1.1 compatible", so they should be Linux compatible, but I'd still check with the Linux USB gurus.
Brad
... out of seeing the handful of posts NIT-PICKING the numeric versioning system thing.
And, since I haven't posted here for awhile, and so dislike people who nit-pick an issue simply to look intelligent, allow me to take the very same sentance and explain it to you:
"MontaVista would like to see this technology, or similar technology, utilized as a foundational feature of Linux 2.5,"
"... this technology, or similar technology", referring to the preemptive structure changes and coding they have been working on. Very cool, and I think everyone can follow it this far.
"... utilized as a foundational feature", meaning they would like to see these largish to major changes made early on, either all theirs, part theirs, worked on by them, others, or a better way, whatever works out to be the Best Thing for Linux. Again, seems fairly clear to me.
"... of Linux 2.5", meaning they would like to see it begin incorporation in Linux 2.5. This seems proper to me.
As I see it, it was stated correctly, a new, and fundamentally large change such as this would be inculded in a DEVELOPMENT kernel. Hence, the term DEVELOPMENT.
A large change like this would NOT get directly incorporated into a STABLE kernel series.
You're beef seems to be more of a grammatical one than anything else. Would Montavista stating it this way have satisfied you - "MontaVista would like to see this technology, or similar technology, utilized as a foundational feature at the beginning of Linux 2.5,"? Probably not.
Long ago, I read the explanation of the versioning system being used in Linux, and understood it. And ever since, I've gotten a chuckle out of anal-retentive grammatical nazi Slashdotters like yourself who feel the need to try and show the world that they know it too.
Get over it.
And now that I'm guilty of doing the exact same thing I so dislike here, I'm moving on before I end up conditioning myself to be guilty of it more often.
Action -> Reaction
Filter by port -> Change ports
Filter by IP address -> Multihome or distribute database
Filter by content -> Hide or encrypt data
Shut down central database -> Restructure into distributed database
Granted, this sounds easy, and I'm no wizard at any of these issues (so don't nitpick and argue with me over it), but you get the point. Napster will die, two dozen more will appear, and each will address these single failure (or kill) points. It will simply continue to evolve, pure and simple.
Even though they may like to think so, they just don't HAVE that much control, and contrary to what they may think, the generally ignorant public, if even minimally informed, won't stand for that sort of data stream censorship.
Think about it - it's the classic definition of censorship. "You can't have it because it's wrong/bad for you/illegal/immoral/stupid/etc."
It just amazes and amuses me that the powers that be REFUSE to acknowledge that the Genie is out of the bottle. You can't undo it, you can't put it back in. It's over. Concentrate on developing a decent cross platform secure digital music format that allows for the distribution of music over the Internet, for a reasonable fee.
Mr. Heckler, what color is the sky in your world? What does it smell like there?
Even though I only control a handful of "fringe" routers for a small ISP I own, this is one company that won't be doing a thing to filter or censor content - EVER.
Time to sell/auction/retire/smash/burn/scrap my Sony A/V equipment? Starting to look like it.
Brad