Modern floppies

[Kenan]

They can still be purchased I guess (floppy disks). My question is, are these compatible, can they be used with Amiga computers (to transfer ADFs etc)?

[psygnosis]

Ive seen loads on ebay uk that is ...im unsure on compatability im assuming you mean pc floppies

[mikey2002kent]

I still buy pc floppies, sometimes you have to cover the left hand hole with tape then format using the amiga but have had no problems so far

[videofx]

800K floppies can be found but they ask a lot of money. So I just bought 10 boxes of 1.44MB HD floppies for 75p a box. All you have to do is cover the HD hole and they format and work just fine in the Amiga.

I was always led to believe that although covering a hole does transform a HD floppy into a DD one, it's not a good long term solution as the magnetic properties / recording strength are not the same and such disks are far more likely to fail. In other words the hole is not the only difference between these diskettes.

[Kenan]

Thanks for the replies guys!

[mikey2002kent]

Originally Posted by lokiloki

I was always led to believe that although covering a hole does transform a HD floppy into a DD one, it's not a good long term solution as the magnetic properties / recording strength are not the same and such disks are far more likely to fail. In other words the hole is not the only difference between these diskettes.

could indeed be true but if just using for turning adfs back into disks rather than important data then its not really too much to worry about

[XimeR]

I was led to believe that covering the hole on the disks would have no effect whatsoever, as the amiga floppy drive doesn't even have a sensor to detect if the disk is HD or DD.
As far as I'm aware, you just have to format the disk and that's it, job done.

[Cymru]

Not entirely true. The HD disks have a higher density of magnetic particles to (store a higher density bit pattern) and are meant to be written to with a stronger magnetic field.

[DH]

Originally Posted by lokiloki

I was always led to believe that although covering a hole does transform a HD floppy into a DD one, it's not a good long term solution as the magnetic properties / recording strength are not the same and such disks are far more likely to fail. In other words the hole is not the only difference between these diskettes.

I have, still to this day, the 200 HD floppies I used with my Amiga, and I never had any trouble using them either, despite the differences. And no, you didn't need to cover up that hole for an Amiga to see them as DD. As Ximer says, you just popped them in and formatted them.

I had my whole A1200 backed up onto these for years, never failed.

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Cymru

The HD disks have a higher density of magnetic particles to (store a higher density bit pattern) and are meant to be written to with a stronger magnetic field.

That's simply not true. The high density disk drives actually use a weaker magnetic field.

For this reason, if you use cheap, unbranded HD disks in a double density drive, the stronger magnetic field can in fact damage the recording layer.

For the best possible chance of success when using HD disks in a double density (880K) Amiga drive, always use branded disks.

[DH]

Originally Posted by prowler

That's simply not true. The high density disk drives actually use a weaker magnetic field.

For this reason, if you use cheap, unbranded HD disks in a double density drive, the stronger magnetic field can in fact damage the recording layer.

For the best possible chance of success when using HD disks in a double density (880K) Amiga drive, always use branded disks.

Thanks for clearing that one up Prowler, I somehow knew you would know. All my disks were branded, so that's probably why I never lost a thing, even years later

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by DH

And no, you didn't need to cover up that hole for an Amiga to see them as DD.

Maybe no need on Amiga, but certainly on PC you did! Which is why if you wanted to transfer between Amiga and PC (in MS-DOS formatted 720k disk) you would need to cover whole to enable this (on the PC side).

[DH]

Indeed, but I was not prepared to mention that as tbh it was obvious, and we're talking about sole use with the Amiga here

[alenppc]

I would also buy new floppies, not old ones... but they are almost impossible to find. Nobody sells them anymore. Over here, i can get them shipped from specialized US ebay sellers but they cost an arm and a leg.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by prowler

That's simply not true. The high density disk drives actually use a weaker magnetic field.

For this reason, if you use cheap, unbranded HD disks in a double density drive, the stronger magnetic field can in fact damage the recording layer.

For the best possible chance of success when using HD disks in a double density (880K) Amiga drive, always use branded disks.

Nope - first for HD different ferromagnetic can be used - many HD floppies have different translucency and color when enlighten by strong light, term that described this difference between DD and HD coercivity - HD use higher coercivity material and they require higher write current and higher erase current.

http://www.retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/guzis.html

HD switch perform this role - it tell to HD floppy drive electronics that this is different material and different times (in differentiatior) and higher current in writing amplifier (also in erase generator) are required.

At some point HD floppies can produce less reliable results when used as DD.

This can be seen as analogy to tapes used for audio recordings - Fe, CrO, Me - Me can be written in Fe but such recording will be less reliable also previous recording can be not fully erased.

[lesta_smsc]

To be fair. I've heard lots of people use older disks without problems. You might be better off finding demo disks on eBay and then just formatting them. In the most part, they should be good enough for writing. If they format properly, I would not envisage a problem with writing?

[ElectroBlaster]

A few years back I trawled ebay and managed to acquire a large bundle of unused funky coloured HD disks.

The lot was quite big so I just applied the idea that if they work then great, they were cheap. Been using them on both the amiga and atari st without any issue's! also use them for repairing or saving damaged disks.

I have had serious issue's with TDK stuff mind, even the low-density versions of these seem a right pita! god knows why but they seem so unreliable?

[prowler]

Originally Posted by ElectroBlaster

I have had serious issue's with TDK stuff mind, even the low-density versions of these seem a right pita! god knows why but they seem so unreliable?

Yep, my experience with TDK floppy media suggests that they are every bit as unreliable as you have found.

[Cymru]

Prowler,

Thanks for the wrong clarification