Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Gaming => Topic started by: Alexander on July 24, 2007, 11:30:32 PM
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I know it's a bit of a "how long is a piece of string" question, but I've gone through 3 copies of Beneath A Steel Sky from ebay (original, boxed) and I still can't get a copy in which all 15 (!) disks work properly on my A1200.
It's a bit depressing really - it took me two goes to get a working Monkey Island as well. I suppose magnetic media won't last forever - at which point will *all* original Amiga software be lost to time?
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Anything that isn't ADF'ed will be lost after 20 or 30 years... :-(
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Yikes! Probably a good idea to get them WHDLoaded before it's too late:-
http://www.whdload.de/games/BeneathASteelSky.html
http://www.whdload.de/games/MonkeyIsland.html
:pint:
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Anything that isn't ADF'ed will be lost after 20 or 30 years
Then maybe all the anti-piracy freaks will STFU about copying disks and be glad pirated ADFs exist!! :banana:
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TjLaZer wrote:
Anything that isn't ADF'ed will be lost after 20 or 30 years
Then maybe all the anti-piracy freaks will STFU about copying disks and be glad pirated ADFs exist!! :banana:
I'd rather have the CAPS IPFs - no crack nonsense cluttering up the programs.
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It depends on how much they are used and what kind of conditions they are stored in. Every time a floppy is read or written to, it's lifetime is shortened. Floppy based games are the most likely to have problems due to high disk usage. Applications that are installed once on a hard disk are more likely to survive. Floppies are not a realiable data storage medium and whenever I buy an Amiga program on floppies, I immediately make an ADF image of the floppies. This also tests the disks and makes sure they are good before I try to install and use the software. :-)
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Trust me I would also love IPFs but you cannot copy the IPF back to a real disk. Atleast not yet. Will this ever be possible? I really do need to IPF all my original disks too before it's too late!
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anti-piracy freaks
Piracy forever! :roll:
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As someone already mentioned, a lot of it has to do with the way the media is stored.
Just for kicks, I tried some old 5 1/4" floppies (from my C= machines) a few years back. (Some of them nearing 25 years old... YIKES.) Everything was fine. My Amiga floppies are also OK, AFAIK.
Everything is stored in disk containers, and FWIW I live in a dry, temperate climate.
Obviously, they will eventually be unusable, my *guess* is sometime during the next 10 years. I may archive a few things, if I find time someday.
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I have tons of Commodore 64 floppies from like 1984 that still work just fine. I suspect that the conditions theyre stored in and how much use they get are a factor.
That said, its wise to either make ADF/D64 copies and/or set up WHDLoad and install to hard drive. With C64 most programs are available online in D64 form from plenty of sites, and are likely to be well preserved now for longer than much C64 hardware will likely last. That doesnt seem to be true of Amiga software being preserved in ADF format outside of personal collections, so that's kind of a bummer. I guess Amiga folks are more copyright-crazy than C64 people.
In the case of personal files (letters, home made programs, etc) then you definitely ought to preserve those somewhere, because when your floppies go, that's it.
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Someone was once telling me that the Earths magnetic pull will damage magnetic media over time, but a way of preventing this is to rotate your mag-media archive by 90 degrees every twelve months. Now the first part I believe, but is there any truth to the second?
P.S.
I have some really old game disks which are probably about twenty years old and still run fine. Only about one percent of my disks (Most are very old) have developed errors.
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I'm pretty skeptical about the Earth's magnetism being a real factor. I suppose it could be true, I've never researched it, but that has the sound of urban legend. I'd be much more concerned about local fields (putting disks too close to speakers, a TV... magnets hehe), climate issues (excess humidity or dryness or whatever is worse, heat, etc), physical damage (dirt, bending) and in the case of C64 disks, banging 1541 heads reacting to lame copy protection or bad alignment.
Of my disks, my Amiga disks are fairly new. My C64/128 disks go back to like 1984 and most disks are from 1984-1992. I have a few new disks Ive bought in the last 2 years. Of the old disks, about 10-15% are bad. But most of those have BEEN bad since the 80s... dud disks, alignment manglings, physical damag, stuff like that. Of the disks that worked fine in the 80s and early 90s, most work fine still. 1% seems a bit too low for my results, but its probably under 5%. Considering how many of these disks are over 20 years old and how many times theyve been used, reformatted, given new data, etc, I'd say thats damn impressive.
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lol!
but floppies are BAD!
iv had floppy failures since i first started using them..
the amiga had HEAPS of bad floppies... tonns in fact.
At one time i had about 1000 games all on disks.. and i never knew that next time round of playn superfrog one of the disks would fail!!
failure rate was about 5-8% i guess. nothing has changed these days.. but I do recall something that DD disk were more reliable than HD....
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Hi,
Ironically enough, some pirated copies may outlast the originals... Lots of original game disks were on cheap, shoddy, low quality media - sometimes even over-stickered ex-PC disks (like some magazines used to use), whereas the early days of piracy (or "backing up"!) would have been done to decent branded media by large numbers of people.
I also have an original of Beneath A Steel Sky with its 15 disks and huge heavy box (bought as part of a job lot) but have never got round to testing it!
New floppies (HD ones) seem to be of terrible quality too... I still use them now and again (mainly to keep a good selection of boot/driver disks for older PCs and the like) and the cheap "no name" ones are useless and full of errors.
As others have said above though, my own Amiga disks dating from 1988 are nearly all still readable 100% error free! But of course, I have backed these all up into ADFs just in case!
- Ali
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For my 2 cents: Floppy lifespan seems to vary considerably,
even if care is taken regarding magnetic fields, and climate.
I mean I had an original Directory Opus disk, AND it's backup
stop working yet I have a WB1.3 disk from my first Amiga
that still works...
People, we need to start archiving our disks to HD, or .ADF's
or something...
Funny, I have only lost maybe 2% of my 5 1/4" C-64 floppies...
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Doh! Double post, sorry...
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InTheSand wrote:
New floppies (HD ones) seem to be of terrible quality too...
Physically beseen, apart from the extra hole in the case of the floppy, there's no difference between HD and DD floppies. Nowadays I often use HD floppies for games on my Amiga (I cover up that hole with sticky tape).
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Btw. my experience also is that burned cd's are equally unreliable, compared to floppies.
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@Speelgoedmannetje:
I've heard the opposite - HD floppies needing stronger magnetic field and being unreliable when used as DD(after some time the recording goes bad)
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I'm pretty skeptical about the Earth's magnetism being a real factor. I suppose it could be true, I've never researched it, but that has the sound of urban legend. I'd be much more concerned about local fields (putting disks too close to speakers, a TV... magnets hehe), climate issues (excess humidity or dryness or whatever is worse, heat, etc), physical damage (dirt, bending) and in the case of C64 disks, banging 1541 heads reacting to lame copy protection or bad alignment.
Of my disks, my Amiga disks are fairly new. My C64/128 disks go back to like 1984 and most disks are from 1984-1992. I have a few new disks Ive bought in the last 2 years. Of the old disks, about 10-15% are bad. But most of those have BEEN bad since the 80s... dud disks, alignment manglings, physical damag, stuff like that. Of the disks that worked fine in the 80s and early 90s, most work fine still. 1% seems a bit too low for my results, but its probably under 5%. Considering how many of these disks are over 20 years old and how many times theyve been used, reformatted, given new data, etc, I'd say thats damn impressive.
Maybe we should contact mythbusters about this :-P
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This isn't true according to what I have read.
The argument goes that that HD floppy drives were more advanced/accurate and therefore didn't require such high quality media.
DD media is superior to HD media which is ironic really as the HD stuff cost more. You'd have been better buying DD and punching a hole in it!
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I have backed up my amiga disks in .LHA or .DMS form and copied it into the amiga HD. And then to a PC formatted zip disk and written it to a CD on my PC.... (not having CD-writer for my amiga). And thereby (hopefully) they will last my lifetime...
zip disks is (AFAIK) a pretty sturdy storage format...
Having a long life....
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No easy answer on that. It depends on how they have been stored, brand and probably even what kind of floppy drive you have been using to read them with. I know most of mine works still, even though they have not been stored the best way.