Linux Kernel's Floppy Disk Code Is Seeing Improvements In 2020

[skeetre]

You can mount flash drives as read-only. But even then, you said "transferring data from one network to another". Unless these networks are isolated from each other, why not just use the network to transfer files?

We can't use flash drives, even as read only. And from one network to another means they're 2 separate networks, or obviously I'd transfer the files over the network.

And yeah, I've had zip disks get corrupted, but still, when they came out, they were awesome. And cheaper than Jazz drives. I tried about 5 zip disks a few months back and I think 3 were readable, 1 was somewhat readable, and the 5th was a lost cause.

[zyxxel]

Another format I wasn't aware of. Unfortunately it is aimed at the archival segment, so it is a bit out of most people reach.

Basically is a cartridge with 11 Blu-ray disks, with up to 3.3 TB of capacity. They will release a 5.5 TB this year.

The disks are nice. But the price of the drive isn't. I think some "Maker" work with 3D printer etc (or repurpose an old rotary CD changer) with naked disks and a more normal BD writer is the only practical way to not bust the bank.

If we don't need 50+ years retention in a single media generation we can get quite far with a redundant file system where the data is pooled over multiple drives - obviously the drives needs to be replaced every x years but the media price for disks are acceptable until we start to aim for 100+ TB of data.

[M@GOid]

DVD-RAM.... OBSOLETE!!!!!
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...ical_disc.html

Another format I wasn't aware of. Unfortunately it is aimed at the archival segment, so it is a bit out of most people reach.

Basically is a cartridge with 11 Blu-ray disks, with up to 3.3 TB of capacity. They will release a 5.5 TB this year.

[cb88]

I think one problem was that they went for a bit too high track density on 3.5" diskettes and that lots of the drives just couldn't align well enough. So a diskette written on one drive did not smoothly transferred to a different drive. This means that people who only used 3.5" diskettes for backup of their only computer fared much better than people who had to use the 3.5" format for moving data between home and work or similar. Hard disks and optical disks needs a control loop where the head is dynamically controlled to align on top of the tracks, but the old diskette stations just had a stepper motor that ticked x steps from the end point.

Also people would store thier floppies next to their CRT montor (I know we did when I was a kid).... and every time you turn your monitor on they get degaussed just a bit...

[cb88]

This magnetic stuff is so obsolete. I prefer my floppy disks to be optical and shiny.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-RAM

DVD-RAM.... OBSOLETE!!!!!
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...ical_disc.html

[zyxxel]

I never had the pleasure to deal with 8 inch floppies (the true floppy, 5.25 was already called mini-floppy as I found out much later). But I grew up with cartridges w. ROMs, cassettes, 5.25 and 3.5 diskettes, and I still do have a lot of love for them, even with their shortcomings. It was an entirely different time then, life was different, and people with computers were real nerds.
I'd not be certain so subscribe that 3.5" ones were all bad - I still have some which work after... 20(?) years, but yes, some would break from one day to the next. And I also remember saving the same files 2x on a floppy and again on a secondary floppy, just even for a transport from university home.
It's nasty that one can hardly get any good floppy (+controller!) on the market, let aside maybe something like Kryoflux.

I think one problem was that they went for a bit too high track density on 3.5" diskettes and that lots of the drives just couldn't align well enough. So a diskette written on one drive did not smoothly transferred to a different drive. This means that people who only used 3.5" diskettes for backup of their only computer fared much better than people who had to use the 3.5" format for moving data between home and work or similar. Hard disks and optical disks needs a control loop where the head is dynamically controlled to align on top of the tracks, but the old diskette stations just had a stepper motor that ticked x steps from the end point.

[Adarion]

I never had the pleasure to deal with 8 inch floppies (the true floppy, 5.25 was already called mini-floppy as I found out much later). But I grew up with cartridges w. ROMs, cassettes, 5.25 and 3.5 diskettes, and I still do have a lot of love for them, even with their shortcomings. It was an entirely different time then, life was different, and people with computers were real nerds.
I'd not be certain so subscribe that 3.5" ones were all bad - I still have some which work after... 20(?) years, but yes, some would break from one day to the next. And I also remember saving the same files 2x on a floppy and again on a secondary floppy, just even for a transport from university home.
It's nasty that one can hardly get any good floppy (+controller!) on the market, let aside maybe something like Kryoflux.

[zyxxel]

Yeah, the race to the bottom came with high unreliability of the disks. People say that even floppies weren't all that bad in the 80's. Memories of frustration while trying to access data on some disks (CDs too) made me a early converted to flashdrives. I still have my first one, a blue, 1GB Corsair Flash Voyager (still works!).

I remember a day doing a 45 min bus ride to a friend's house to bring back a pack of floppy disks full of arcade ROMs (MAME), only to find out that disk 5 or 6 was corrupted... (in the "single big Zip file in multiple disks" days). Still makes me mad 20 years latter.

The original 8" and 5.25" floppies worked very well. Even if you bent one 90 degrees you could continue to use it - it would just be a bit more noisy because of friction.

But already from day one, the majority of brands of 3.5" diskettes were bad. And from there it just went downhill. So with 3.5" - even with good brands - it was more a rule to save everything twice. With 5 diskettes worth of data spread over 10 diskettes it was normally possible to recover everything without a loss. Sneakernet transfers could be quite frustrating back then. And hooray for 50 kB/s transfer rates...

[rogerx]

To some extent, I think a floppy is still required to start installing MS Windows XP on some platforms due to SATA drivers not being included, with no IDE->SATA controller drivers fallback.

I still have a IDE and USB floppy drives here.

My real fear is adding broken code, breaking the floppy driver. And when adding any code, bugs are usually expected. Adding a lot of code like this, is likely ripe for a broken driver for some moth-balled floppy disk maker, not found until years later, with nobody to fix when needed!

I think before making such drastic changes like this, the driver should fork into new/old driver, or a version 1 (old) and version 2 (newer) driver for fallback.

[uxmkt]

got myself an external USB floppy drive that worked surprisingly well.

The floppy driver is only for devices without shrinkwrapping by a protocol such as USB or Firewire or otherwise.
The same is true for SD card readers, and you can verify that: /dev/mmcblk0 will only show up if your SD reader is direct-attached. If it's some kind of USB-based reader, you will see media showing as /dev/sda instead.