Re: Good source for "new" 5.25 and 3.5 inch floppy disks?

[winston19842005 <bjjlyates@bellsouth.net>]

On 9/18/07 5:45 PM, in article 1dyi919e4s6sf.1dhhkk4bzyhuy$.dlg@40tude.net,
"Jeff Blakeney" <jeff.blakeney@a2central.com.remove-10ib-this> wrote:

>   To: winston19842005
> On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:30:41 -0400, winston19842005 wrote:
> 
>> On 9/18/07 7:53 AM, in article
>> zOKdne9oWf62IXLbnZ2dnUVZ_uiknZ2d@giganews.com, "Steven Hirsch"
>> <snhirsch@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> winston19842005 wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> WalMart and other office supply stores sell *high density* disks.
>>>>> Though you can use such disks in a pinch (I'm told), what I'm looking
>>>>> for is 800k double-density disks.
>>>> 
>>>> Well, we Tiers use them all the time in our 720k drives, just tape over the
>>>> density hole.
>>> 
>>> You must enjoy data loss, then.  The heads on low density drives cannot
>>> generate a field sufficient to fully saturate domains on the media.  Don't
>>> bet
>>> the farm on being able to read those disks back after a few years.
>> 
>> Sorry, you are confusing HD 5.25" with 3.5" HD (here we go again, <sigh>!).
>> Besides, in my case I AM using an HD 3.5" drive, just in LD mode...
> 
> With Apple II 3.5" drives, it depends on the drive whether you can
> successfully use HD 3.5" disks or not.
> 
> I personally have had a drive that could write to HD 3.5" disks and was
> able to read them back for a while but I copied all that data over to DD
> disks as soon as I got more so I don't think I ever had data on a HD
> disk for more than six months or so.  I also had an Apple 3.5 Drive that
> simply refuses to format or write to an HD disk.
> 
> I have read here on comp.sys.apple2 about at least one person who was
> able to write to an HD disk and was able to read from it for some time
> but after a while he could no longer read the disk.

I've had this happen with HD 3.5" on a PC as well. Too many times. I get
more mileage on my TI on HD disks.

OTOH, I once had a 3.5" HD in my car I'd forgotten about in the console for
about 3 years that was in perfect condition when I found it. Didn't lose
anything... And being in the southeast U.S., where it reaches the upper
90's, that is pretty good!