how long will a floppy disc last i have a just bought 3 different Sony digital cameras in a lot for 40nzd they take floppy disc how many times can i reuse a floppy disc before can't hold data or be able to be able to read the data from it
It depends on the conditions its stored in. In direct sunlight or extreme [damp/hot] environments floppy disks in the old 80's blister packs have been known to bulge out and become useless. On the other hand I have floppy disks that have been knocking about on bookcases and stuff and they still read perfectly. Not sure why you'd bother unless your flipping the cameras for a profit. images on a floppy disk cant be high quality or hold many images. For 40 of just about any currency you can buy a nice used digital camera that will take SD
i have always wanted these cameras for the longest time the ones i got are like new and in new zealand 1 goes for $25+ and most of the time they are missing things like the charger lens cap or a scratched or have dead battery so i got a good deal also the cameras came with 100 floppy discs and i just found i have 2 brand new packs of sony floppy discs also i collect cameras i am going to use the camera with my old windows 98 laptop i have here one of the cameras is the sony mavica mvc-fd91 it takes quite good photos for its age also has great zoom i could get one of these but these cost and arm and a leg to get one
Would it be possible at alll to fit a HxC floppy emulator in one of your cameras? i know it sounds kind of crazy but if there's room for a floppy drive I can't imagine there isn't room for a floppy emulator
Floppy disks don't have a penalty for writing any more than they do for reading, which is very low, but does exist since the heads make contact with the disk. Bad disks (assuming reasonable storage conditions) are generally due to age/manufacturing quality rather than wear. Accessing a specific area of a disk (a track) thousands of times will probably result in a bad sector, indicating physical track wear. How many thousands of times should depend on the age and quality of the disk and to a lesser extent the drive.
Those two packs of floppies should last you a while, just don't expose them to heat (i.e. leave them in the sun). They're pretty sensitive. (One hot summer, I lost a whole box of floppies' worth of data... Despite having kept them indoors. I coul reuse the actual floppies though, they just lost their contents.) Dang, those things have gotten way smaller than the last time I looked them up. Yeah, they're the best long-term solution (if they fit, at least), but they're also noticeably more expensive than the adapter/converter jamespoo mentioned...
I want to point out I still use 5 1/4" floppies on my Apple II, TRS-80, & Commodore 8bit machines. The floppies are at least 20-30 years old. 3.5" floppies are a little bit tougher, because of their shell. But their magnetic tracks are packed tighter, so easier chance of error. This is my suggestion. If you really like the camera, then get a bunch of different types of floppies you can located and do tests. Figure out which seems to work the best with your camera and try not to leave stuff on floppies, copy them over to a PC first chance you get. Keep your floppies in hard plastic cases, in the shade/cool area, don't throw them around, leave them lying around and you should find that they will last decent.
My camera is one of those Sony cameras that take 3.5" disks. My batteries for it are still good, the flash broke on the camera, it doesn't flash, even when I'm telling it to do it. So I am thinking that the flash light is burn out. ;( =hugh
