Task: Purchase Refurbished 3.5″ Floppy Disks for Your Retro Computer
Needed: Web Browser and Retro Computer with 3.5″ Floppy Drive
Time: 10-15 Minutes
Introduction
I am more of an 8-bit guy and have found 5.25″ floppy disks to be quite reliable. For example, I have a collection of over 1000 such floppies and, in my experience, about 90-95% still reliably work after all these years. In addition, I can buy new old stock floppies and most if not all work just fine. I cannot say the same about 3.5″ floppies which have been very unreliable. I have heard that very early 3.5″ floppies work better than later ones from the 1990s. Regardless, I have had pretty good luck with refurbished and formatted 3.5″ floppies from floppydisk.com. I recently purchased 50 IBM formatted 720KB DS/DD floppies. Of the first 10 I formatted for my Amiga, nine were successful. Not bad!
Instructions
Navigate to floppydisk.com and purchase 10 or 50 new old stock or recycled and formatted floppy disks. My Amigas take 720KB DS/DD floppies which I paid $1/each for in a pack of 50 that were recycled. These came in a nice box and with a pack of labels which is a nice touch.
Comments
Very happy to have these! Will they last another 10-20 years?
Here are two screenshots of re-formatting these disks on my Amiga 1200.
