How to store 3.5" floppy disks (Amiga, Macintosh, PC)

[LunarOne]

Does anyone store floppy disks still?

I've just found some boxes containing around 600-700 3.5" floppy disks dating back as far as 1988. Most are Amiga applications, data disks, cover disks but some are PC disks and some were my schoolwork written either on Amiga disks or on the school Macintosh computers we had in the early '90s. One seems to contain some C programs I wrote at university.

I haven't seen these disks since moving house 15 years ago, and now that I have them, I'd be keen to find a way to preserve them as best as I can in case there's any way I can retrieve the data. I still have an Amiga A500 and an A4000. I've also got several old PCs with floppy drives, but I don't have a classic Macintosh knocking about. A lot of the Amiga games are in their original boxes, so maybe those might have some value. Things like Lemmings, Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge, Back to the Future II, Batman etc.

Anyway assuming you had all these diskettes, how would you store them if you wanted to preserve them? Or would you bin them? In my day job I build systems capable of storing hundreds of petabytes data, and here I am worrying about a bunch of floppy disks containing less than 1MB each!

[vaud]

Google the ones you really like - there are loads of disk images to download.

[Alex Z]

Amiga big box games are definitely valuable, even untested. EBay is your friend, or any of the Facebook collectors groups.

For anything non-original, I’d just recycle them or give them away, as pretty much anything will already have been dumped and made available online.

[speedyman]

They need to be kept in a cool dry environment, don't store them in the loft, it will be to hot and humid in summer and the disks could warp. I've seen tapes that have grown mold on them because of bad humidity.

[x404]

I keep mine (a few hundred, Mac and PC) in a north facing internal hall cupboard which has a pretty stable cool temp all year around. I have a Mac Plus and SE with 3.5" floppies that work from the mid-1980s, I tested one machine last year before selling and discs all worked perfectly. Also, I've still got my University projects on 3.5" too (if anyone is ever interested in my degree from the '90s!).

Just keep them away from damp/humidity, high heat and of course - magnetic interference.

Edited by x404 on Sunday 22 March 13:46

[OIC]

Slight OT hijack - sorry.

What's the best way to erase any data on a floppy without using a computer?

I have hundreds with lots of old word and excel stuff plus personal files but no floppy drive.

Can I run a powerful magnet over them?

Take the magnetic disc out and burn it?

If I get a USB floppy drive do I just use Windows delete to erase them or are there more secure programmes around?

[LunarOne]

I'm sure any of the methods you mention would work fine! Magnets out of a hard disk, or an old speaker you have lying around will do the trick!

[LunarOne]

A bit of research has revealed domething called a Greaseweazle which is a bit of hardware which can interface with almost any floppy drive and record the magnetic flux on the magnetic medium into an image file - so it will apparently work with any diskette, even copy-protected ones. It's not very expensive so I've ordered one. Then hopefully I won't have to worry too much about storage conditions in future.

[LunarOne]

vaud said:

Google the ones you really like - there are loads of disk images to download.

Thanks, but I'm not so interested in downloading image files - I've been using images with emulators for years but I'm more interested in preserving the physical floppies that I have - and I have far more than I remember! Some of them are rare and quite a few of them contain documents that were created by me and therefore won't exist in someone else's library.

[snuffy]

OIC said:

Slight OT hijack - sorry.

What's the best way to erase any data on a floppy without using a computer?

I have hundreds with lots of old word and excel stuff plus personal files but no floppy drive.

Can I run a powerful magnet over them?

Take the magnetic disc out and burn it?

If I get a USB floppy drive do I just use Windows delete to erase them or are there more secure programmes around?

Snap them in half if you are worried.

Even if you just put them in your bin, in reality, who is going to go to the trouble of fishing them out of a landfill site just to see what's on them?

[mmm-five]

I've got an old office shredder that I use solely for CDs, DVDs, disks, and credit/debit cards.

[vaud]

LunarOne said:

Thanks, but I'm not so interested in downloading image files - I've been using images with emulators for years but I'm more interested in preserving the physical floppies that I have - and I have far more than I remember! Some of them are rare and quite a few of them contain documents that were created by me and therefore won't exist in someone else's library.

Then don’t try to preserve the ones with documents- get the data off.

[twister]

LunarOne said:

A bit of research has revealed domething called a Greaseweazle which is a bit of hardware which can interface with almost any floppy drive and record the magnetic flux on the magnetic medium into an image file - so it will apparently work with any diskette, even copy-protected ones. It's not very expensive so I've ordered one. Then hopefully I won't have to worry too much about storage conditions in future.

After rediscovering all of my old Amiga discs a couple of years ago following a rearranging of all the random storage crates in the shed, I got myself a Greaseweazle in the hope that at least some of them might still be readable after a couple of decades of being moved around between loft and shed without any attempt to store them properly. Was therefore very pleasantly surprised to discover that, whilst several of them did generate read errors during the process of backing them up, so far none of those errors actually appear to have resulted in lost data.

And without question, being able to browse through those old files again for the first time in at least a couple of decades, seeing my old artwork and music, programs, documents etc, was worth every penny I paid for the GW. There's something exceedingly satisfying anyway about indulging in a spot of retro computing, and when you get to do it with stuff that's personal to you as well, it's the icing on the cake.

So good luck with your own personal dive into your computing history, hope you find some real treasures!

[LunarOne]

twister said:

So good luck with your own personal dive into your computing history, hope you find some real treasures!

Thanks! I've just spent the afternoon dismantling my A4000 and cleaning up the motherboard. Thankfully it doesn't seem to have been too badly affected by battery leakage but there's also signs of the capacitors leaking. There's a little bit of greenery inside the connectors on one of the Zorro slots on the daughterboard, but the CPU board and the Emplant board look pristine still. I may well remove and re-insert all of the chips and use a bit of deoxit on everything.



I actually ordered a kit of capacitors and a replacement battery in January from Amigakit and have realised that it never arrived. Weirdly, their website shows no orders, the items I ordered are still in my shopping basket, yet I have an ebay transaction receipt for the cost of the items.

[Mr Whippy]

I went through similar about 12 years ago and sold most on eBay, some games like C64 Ballblazer went for about £80 iirc.

Some stuff lots less. Quite a few of the C64 floppies had spots on disk but still sold ok, but likely wouldn’t work. I assume they might be cleanable?

I kept a few tapes/boxes of my faves for C64 for nostalgia.