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".