I was looking at getting a FDS off ebay or a Twin for the fun of it and one auction on ebay said side B wasn't functional on his Metroid disk. A quick lookup on wikipedia says that one sector gone bad would mean the game wouldn't function. Further more it's a modification of an existing format called "quick disk'. Are there any catweasel like devices that let you dump/rewrite the disks? I'd hate to invest the money into one and find out the disk had been demagnetized through shipping. I also know the belts are iffy. I can get them made if absolutely necessary but it looks like ebay has that covered.
No disks are fully demagnetized as of today, only through mechanical failures will the surface be damaged enough for the data to be lost. It is possible for the data to be overwritten, but that would require an immense glitch in software and a drive capable of writing to the disk. There is an elaborate system protecting against that. Generally you can recover disks by reading them with finesse and writing them back. Look into FDSLoadr @ Nesdev (google), FDSloadr is the most modern, popular and elaborate system for this but requires a true DOS PC, no if ands or buts. If you have a spare FDS RAM adapter, you can build a cable for FDSLoadr which streams data from the parallel port to the RAM adapter relieving the need for disks at all (presuming you backup your disks first)
FDSLoader can also connect to the FDS Disk Drive and dump and rewrite disks. HOWEVER, the FDS write-protection circuitry has to be physically disabled first for writing to be possible.
Yes, yes they are. I have hundreds of FDS disks consisting of all makes, their data is durable. Today it's not even a matter of protecting the disks from dust, it's a matter of protecting them from themselves. Things I've had to deal with: sand/dirt/cat hair/some sort of sticky food/cigarette related filth on the disks surface, I've had the center spooler thing's glue fail and fall apart during use, I've had too thick and too thin disks which require manual coaxing internally, I have disks that require 20 tries before they load (generally errors 21/22/27), but they do. It's also often the case that if one drive won't read a disk, another will due to the low level nature of the drives.
Ok Calpis you put my mind at ease. I've had regular floppy disks fail at regular intervals, even old ones made of quality. Seems like they are more durable than I gave them credit for.
