Amtrade High Density Floppy Drives: Worth It?

[Tsargon]

Does anyone have any experience with the Amtrade HD floppy drives?  My supply of working 880K floppy disks is dwindling rapidly and I was wondering whether it was worth it to invest in one of these or just try and find an 880K floppy supplier.

Thanks!

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Tsargon

[amigadave]

I wouldn't bother with a HD floppy drive if all your disks are 880k DD floppies.  Amiga HD floppy drives operate by spinning at half speed when accessing or writing to the 1.76mb density.  Get any 880k replacement drive and convert your old floppies to adf's ASAP before it is too late and they are all corrupt.

(edit) I see that you need the HD floppy drive because you are finding it hard to find floppies that are DD.  I have an Amtrade HD drive in an A2000, but have not used it in a while.  I had a little trouble with it, but it works intermittently on HD disks.

[bigdan]

I use one (intern model) with an "Escom" A1200 and it works great since years... it's a good hack !

My A4000 use 2 HD Chinon floppydrive (DF0 and DF1) but one fails to read 1,76 Mb FD some time to time...

http://www.schatztruhe.de/ (aka GTI) still sells DD disks too !

[Doppie1200]

Keep a good eye out for DD disks. I obtained 10 packs of factory sealed BASF disks yesterday for just 10 euro. There are plent more from where they came from. But I think the shipping costs would kill you.

[LoadWB]

My gf's family got me a 50-pack of DD for Christmas from here

http://www.windsorgrp.com/

Good stuff... 50-pack of unformatted DD for $9!!

[icbrkr]

LoadWB wrote:
My gf's family got me a 50-pack of DD for Christmas from here

http://www.windsorgrp.com/

Good stuff... 50-pack of unformatted DD for $9!!

That's cheaper than I was paying for them!  Thanks for the info.

Brian

[Legerdemain]

My supply of working 880K floppy disks is dwindling rapidly and I was wondering whether it was worth it to invest in one of these or just try and find an 880K floppy supplier.

Depends on what you are storing on those disks. If you are planning on keeping important document on those discs and also are planning on keeping the files on the disks for a long time to come (we're talking years here)... well, then I would recommend a  HD drive for use with HD floppies if you are running out of supply of DD floppies.

But... if what is stored on the disks isn't that important, more for everyday use, then I would recommend just using HD disks with your DD drive.

I have yet not seen one of my HD disks fail when being used with my DD drive in my A1200. And some of them holds files since some 10 years. I know there are people having problems with the data being easily corrupted when using HD floppies with a DD drive, but I am yet to experience that.

[CLS2086]

Hum,
what are you doing of your non working 880kb drives ?

[Tsargon]

Everyone,

Thanks for the responses.  I think I'm going to forgo the HD floppy drive and purchase a pack or two of DDs from http://www.windsorgrp.com/, as was recommended.

The two primary uses are to transfer data from the A2000 to the A1200 as I don't have the A1200's network quite right and for creating backups of some key software.  The DD drive units in the Amigas work fine, it's just the disks I have are questionable.  And, as I've gone through them, I began to realize that some of them were questionable to begin with (I bought them really cheap from a friends dad's insurance business who used them for backups before moving over to tape backup!)!

As for the old ones, not sure what I'm doing with them... probably use them as beer coasters!

Again, thanks!
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Tsargon