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From: james@nospam.com
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Subject: Re: Do any stores still sell floppy disks?
Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2017 15:13:34 -0600
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On Sat, 4 Nov 2017 03:48:30 -0500, VanguardLH  wrote:

>There are tools to refresh magnetic media.  I remember GRC Spinrite had
>it.  Others have a refresh, too (I think HDD Regenerator has refresh).
>Haven't needed them in so long that I long ago was too old in my version
>of Spinrite to qualify for an upgrade (and it costs more than many
>HDDs).

Going way back to the Dos days, I had a friend who I'll refer to as a
"computer geek". He was good as a technician, hacker, and probably had
darn near every piece of software one needed at that time. I had an old
IBM PC (floppy only) computer. I took it to him, and he hooked up a hard
drive to it. I still recall buying that USED hard drive at a computer
store, and paying a fortune for it. It was something like 10 megs. 

After connecting the hard drive, he ran Spin Rite on it. I recall that
took hours and I had to come back the next day to get my stuff, since I
think it ran all night. The next day I got my computer and he said that
my hard drive was good. I was new at all this stuff, and I was impressed
by Spin Rite, so before I left, he gave me a copy of it on a floppy. 

Since I later archived all my floppies onto a hard drive, I still have
that old Spin Rite. So, if I boot my Win98 machine to Dos, can I run
that old version of Spin Rite to regenerate some floppies? Will that
work?

I have not used any of that old stuff in years, but I always kept all
software if it was useful. 

Also, since I just bought 5 new blank floppies on ebay, should I run it
on them? They are NEW floppies, but probably "new old stock". I had
already planned to re-format them, but maybe I should do more.... I knew
that floppies went bad over time, but I never knew why. Now I do. 
Thanks for the info.

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