The day I found a box of old floppy disks at Goodwill changed my mind about backups

I was at the Goodwill in Columbus, Ohio last Saturday and found a box of 5.25 inch floppy disks for $2. I used to think physical media backups were useless, but then I remembered my dad lost all his tax files from 1998 when his hard drive died. Now I'm keeping those floppy disks as a reminder that paper or disk is safer than cloud storage sometimes. Has anyone else found old media that made them rethink their backup strategy?

3 comments

3 Comments

jessej2319d ago

Nah man, those old floppy disks are way less reliable than you think. They degrade over time and you can't read them without a working drive anyway.

phoenix_lewis19d ago

Totally get where you're coming from @jessej23. I had a stack of old disks from my first PC that I tried to read last year and half of them just gave errors or wouldn't spin up at all. The magnetic coating flakes off after a while, especially if they were stored in a hot closet. And yeah, tracking down a working USB floppy drive was a pain, most of the ones on ebay are beat up or missing cables. It's a bummer because some of that old data is gone for good.

evan_cooper7318d agoMost Upvoted

Yeah keep a disk imaging tool handy and rip them ASAP before the data decides to peace out.