Tonight was the first of three Irish Parties this weekend. I had prepared a floppy with registrations just for Irish tunes and some midis to play on break. I used it first set, no problem. But, while switching out discs, that slider thing on the Irish disc came off and it was unusable the rest of the night.
All other Irish tunes I did had to be set up on the fly (not my favorite thing--too much guessing and time spent between songs).

The good news: I had saved the original regs and midis on my hard drive and copied a pair for my remaining two jobs this weekend. Sure wish I had run off an extra one before tonights job.
Eddie

Eddie, that's a good reason to have a back up of your floppy disks. Be aware also that not all floppys are created equal. I've noticed that those that I've purchased at Staples, ie., "there own brand", are inferior in quality. One disk became unusable in my PSR 2000 but thankfully it functioned okay in my computer so I was able to copy the contents on my Hard Drive and then transfer them to another floppy disk. Some of them make "noise" when inserted in my Keyboard. The noise is hard to describe (like a churning sound) and it can be annoying. I will definitely be purchasing a different brand next time around. Sony, Imation, and IBM are some of the better brand disks. I learned my lesson. As the old adage goes: Penny wise and Pound foolish. In other words I won't try and scrimp again on something that as you found out could be a make or brake situation all on account of a defective floppy disk.

Best regards,
Mike

Avoid Memorex.
DonM

Eddie

I had a lot of problems with FDs.
I can say that some problems was the FD quality but many problems was caused by storage near of magnetic fields as speakers.

Chico

Avoid the generic floppies like the plague and NEVER, NEVER, NEVER place floppies near anything magnetic. I have a friend that purchased 100 cheap floppies, several of which had the metal slide come off inside his keyboard's floppy drive, making the device useless. Fortunately, he was able to remove the metal disk slides with a pair of tweezers, without damaging the drive. Another musician I know who recorded some great midi files, decided he would play them during the breaks. He placed them on his 1,000-watt amp head during the first set and they were wiped out by the magnetic fields from the transformers. Some lessons are learned the hard way.

Cheers,

Gary

Your right Don. In fact I have some Memorex disks also that I purchased at Target. They are especially bad.

To Gary; How true. Lesson learned. No more cheapies for me.

To ChicoBrasil; Your absolutely right Chico. I make it a point to keep my floppy disks away from my Floor Standing speakers. Although people should know (if they don't already) that they should also keep them away from Computer Monitors "especially when you Degauss it". Also realize that most of your Computer Speakers, ie., Altec Lansing' Ultimate 621's, etc., have Magnetic Sheilding that will protect them from causing interference and from damaging Floppy disks. I believe even the speakers on todays Keyboards, ie., PSR 2000 etc., are Magnetically Sheilded to protect the Keyboards circuitry, etc., although DON'T use a cell phone near your Keyboard. If a call comes in it can cause interference with your keyboard, ie., "possible unwanted noise" that could emanate from the speakers or headphones. This can especially be a nuisance when Gigging.

Best regards,
Mike

[This message has been edited by Idatrod (edited 03-15-2003).]

I have never used any floppy's other then
Imation, & I have never had any problem with
them. (knock on wood)
I have some that has been used for 2yrs. or more
to transfer .sty files & midi files from PC to KB, reformat
the disk & do it all over again, time after time
with no trouble.
Denny

[This message has been edited by dlstarry (edited 03-15-2003).]

Eddie, thanks for posting this topic. I always thought all floppys were the same, made in the same factory, by the same Tiwanians, but with different labels! This is good to know.

Eddie,

I had the same problem with the cheap Staples floppies. It got stuck in my 9k disc drice on a double gig and the metal piece w/spring stayed in there. On the way to the next job I stoppd in a big drugstore and bought a long Tweezer & small Flashlight and performed the extraction procedure on the back seat of my van with the flashlight in my mouth. Luckily it was a success...Whew!!
But now I only use Top Brand floppies for everything.



------------------
www.donnypesce.com

I've been using the Office Depot brand of floppies...probably not a good choice for best quality, but I didn't know there was a difference. I am surprised by the comments on Memorex...guess they had me brainwashed about their tapes.

So...what is the best brand for consistent good quality? Imation CD's are one of the lower priced compact discs here, so I assumed (probably wrongly so) that all their products would be lower end.

Hearing the horror stories of the metal slides and springs getting jammed in the drive makes me shiver.

Eddie

Great Post! I have 6 pairs of loudspeakers in this room with 2 computer monitors too. There are floppies everywhere, albeit not right next to any of these. What exactly is a "safe" distance to keep floppies from danger?

Eddie,

These seem to be the highest rated floppys...

http://www.unleash.com/picks/computer/topcomputerfloppydisks.asp



[This message has been edited by Dnj (edited 03-15-2003).]

I have to tell you, I bought the multi-colored Memorex floppies from Target, too. The ones I got came 40 in a nice little file box. They were crappy - error prone and noisy beyond belief. I tried another purchase of the same disks, thinking maybe I got a bad batch. Nope... noisy and lousy. I don't know what happened to Memorex, but these disks are the worst I've ever used. Avoid them.

Tom G.

Oh my gosh, I just clicked on Donny's link above. The very first product in the best selling floppy list are those lousy Memorex I'm talking about! I recommend you NOT get them.

[This message has been edited by TomTomSF (edited 03-15-2003).]

Charlie,

If the speakers are permanent magnet types, which most are, anything closer than 24 inches is too close. Even at that distance, there can be some detremental affect on the disk information. Additionally, you must keep in mind that all floppy disks have a shelf life. After a while, they tend to loose their magnetic qualities and the data becomes useless.

The best advice for those of you who have lots of midi files stored on floppies is to transfer the files to CDs. In most cases, a single CD can store all of your midi files and still have lots of room left over. CD's are not magnetic and the data is just about indestructable. Retrieval time is quite fast, and you can always transfer selected midis onto a floppy for use during jobs.

Cheers,

Garu

There seems to be a lot of hype about floppies. Magnetic fields reduce remarkably quickly with distance. As a result of this thread I did a little experiment (which you can all try). I filled a floppy with files and placed it on top of one of my speakers for 24 hours. It has an ordinary 5" driver (not a special computer type) in a small box and the floppy was about 2" from the magnet. I then did a file compare and there were no errors which is what I would expect.

I've always used generic floppies and only rarely had a dud. Most of the problems stem from mishandling and bad drives. I've never had the metal cover part from the disk and I've been using floppies since their inception for all my backups (that must be close to 20 years now). Floppies are made by a few manufacturers and often the only difference is the label. CD-Rs are the same. I have a program which detects the manufacturer of a CD-R and all the ones I have (Imation, Memorex etc.) are all made by the same company).

I will agree with Gary, though. Don't place floppies too close to large transformers. There is quite a considerable field due to leakage in the core airgap.

Bryan

Pilot: You are lucky!

My personal floppy mantra is "if it doesnt say TDK, dont bother".