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5.25-inch floppy disks expected to help run San Francisco trains until 2030 (arstechnica.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/technology

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 months ago (8 children)

"The system is currently working just fine, but we know that with each increasing year, risk of data degradation on the floppy disks increases and that at some point there will be a catastrophic failure," Tumlin told ABC7.

Have they literally been using the same set of disks for decades? Surely they can just ... make fresh copies on new disks? As far as I know, they're still being made for specialized industries just like this.

Certainly, they should upgrade their system - this just doesn't feel like the most important reason to do so.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

New disks?

They haven't made floppies for years now, iirc.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You can grab a 10 pack of DS, HD 5.25" on Amazon for $30 apparently

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Floppies got worse over time. Stuff that was commercially duplicated was usually high quality, and those are still OK for the most part. The consumer-level blank disks, though? By the late 90s, those were hot garbage. You'd buy a 10 pack and at least 3 of them had to be thrown out. We're burning through the old stock from that time, and with degradation over time, it's now more like 6 out of 10 being thrown out. It's not like the "good" ones in the box are going to last, either.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

I don't expect them to, just noting there are still new ones out there.

And while something new is being developed/tested, having a metric fuck ton of backup floppies isn't the worst idea.

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