Ordinary floppies were quite reliable, too. At least that was true for those made in the 80s and 90s.
It wasn't unitl the new millenium, when the quality went down hill..
Same for floppy drives (but not so extreme).

About the time when the floppy media became obsolete, manufacturers nolonger cared for quality control.
They just made them as cheap as possible.It's sad that people now have unpleasant memories of them because of this. 🙁

As for the LS-120 drive.. No idea. Wasn't able to get one of them yet. They're so expensive and/or hard to find now.

Anyway, there was a nice LGR episode about floppies..
Perhaps it is interesting for you.

LGR - Floppy Disks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sHztdOSYc

Jo22 wrote:

Ordinary floppies were quite reliable, too. At least that was true for those made in the 80s and 90s. It wasn't unitl the new mi […]
Show full quote

Ordinary floppies were quite reliable, too. At least that was true for those made in the 80s and 90s.
It wasn't unitl the new millenium, when the quality went down hill..
Same for floppy drives (but not so extreme).

About the time when the floppy media became obsolete, manufacturers nolonger cared for quality control.
They just made them as cheap as possible.It's sad that people now have unpleasant memories of them because of this. 🙁

As for the LS-120 drive.. No idea. Wasn't able to get one of them yet. They're so expensive and/or hard to find now.

Anyway, there was a nice LGR episode about floppies..
Perhaps it is interesting for you.

LGR - Floppy Disks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sHztdOSYc

I had a few defective floppies in a brand new previously unopened set of Windows 95 disks. I don't think floppy disks were ever a reliable tech in my opinion.

computergeek92 wrote:

I had a few defective floppies in a brand new previously unopened set of Windows 95 disks. I don't think floppy disks were ever a reliable tech in my opinion.

That's only because you never used cassette tapes to store data (I have a ZX Spectrum + since 1985). Floppies were as reliable as needed, enough to keep your data safe at short/medium term, but not enough for long term backups. Compared to cassette tapes (not backup tapes like 3480, DAT or DLT) they were a big step ahead.

I think 720KB 3.5" floppies are pretty reliable, but the 1.44MB format gave me more trouble. Sometimes when a 1.44MB disk went bad I would reformat them as 720KB to bring them back into service. However, quality of disks and the condition of the drive are surely big factors.
I was recently playing around with ddrescue to compare how well a few drives could read some troublesome floppies, and there was quite a variance between drives.

computergeek92 wrote:

Are the LS-120 Super Discs more reliable than ordinary floppies? The regular floppies I use corrupt very frequently.

I recently got some LS-120 disks but I haven't used them enough to have any idea of their reliability. There is a long thread by somebody named 'multibooter' who researched these drives and disks extensively. It's definitely worth looking at if you're interested in them:
http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/152567-ls-120 … -win98-and-dos/
He seems to think LS120 disks are unreliable, and I'm in no position to argue. He also mentions that many bad disks can be brought back by using a bulk eraser and reinitializing them, but only certain drives are capable of pulling that off, and it's a clunky procedure that wasn't really intended to be done by the user. At least it is apparently possible though.

It seems that LS120 drives improved quite a bit when they went to the so-called "2X" drives. They're called that because they're twice as fast but more importantly they have better tolerance for errors. Assuming you have one of the better drives then I assume LS120 disk reliability is better, but I don't know how much so. By the time the 2X drives came out LS120 was in decline so I think most of it's reputation (negative or otherwise) came from people's experience with earlier drives.

Do LS-120 drives register as drive A:/ in "My Computer"?

As I recall, yes if there is no conventional floppy drive then Win98SE will assign A: to the LS120. I at least remember for sure that it came up as B: when another drive A: already existed. I think Win2k and Win98SE behaved the same.
Under DOS, I think this depends on BIOS support. On a motherboard with the "LS120/ZIP" boot option, for me the LS120 came up as A: with a DOS boot floppy inserted.

Jo22 wrote:

As for the LS-120 drive.. No idea. Wasn't able to get one of them yet. They're so expensive and/or hard to find now.

It seems that all the inexpensively priced LS120 drives on eBay nowadays are Imation external drives for Macs. However, they work on real PCs too. For some reason the labeling and even the retail packaging make it sound like they require a Mac, but they don't. I'm guessing it was part of whatever license agreement they may have had with Apple to let them copy the styling of Macs.
I wonder why those external Mac drives are so predominant. Maybe they got overproduced or Apple people just loved them more than everybody else did. iMacs not having a floppy drive could be part of that. Anyway, those are the drives that are cheapest now.
If you actually want to plug these drives into USB then you need the dongle, which is frequently missing. But if you just want an internal IDE drive, just buy one that's missing the hookups and open the case. The drive inside is IDE. The only problem is it doesn't have a front bezel so it doesn't look very good.

The Imation "SD-USB-M2" models (gray, looks like a G4 Mac) have a Matsushita F933-1 drive inside, which is one of the better 2X drives. They reportedly can't initialize a bulk erased disk though. The SD-USB-M3 models (also gray) have a later production date of that drive which reportedly -can- reinitialize a bulk erased disk, but the M3s aren't as common. Up until recently somebody was selling those drives apparently stripped out of "M3" chassis (they didn't have a bezel), but I guess they've sold out.

The older Imation USB externals with a G3 style Bondi Blue case contain first-gen drives which aren't as good. I think the same is true of the parallel port versions, but not sure if that's universal.
Another indication is the amperage rating shown on the drive label (most eBay ads show it). Because the later model drives are faster, they require more power. Imation included a 5V 1.5A supply for the 2X drives and a 1.0A supply with the older ones.

OP.
Yes LS-120 and ls-240 drive can be used as a floppy A: drive. but frmating a LS-120 or using an ls-120 disk in dos/9x needs drivers. but you can still use 1.44mb disk.
For reliably, I never had a ls120 disk fail on me. the drives on the other hand and be hit or miss. LS120 driver also do a much better job at reading disks, there abit faster and tend to be able to read damage floppy's a lot better.

I have one in my PC and will never go back to a run of the mill floppy drive.
also ls240 drives can format a 1.44mb disk to hold 32mb if I recall.

Jo22 wrote:

As for the LS-120 drive.. No idea. Wasn't able to get one of them yet. They're so expensive and/or hard to find now.

if you look up ls-120 drives by the part/item number you can get them cheap like 15$ cheap. and there wieldy available, but there always list as floppy drives and not ls-120 drives. so looking them up by part numbers makes more since.

Jade Falcon wrote:

OP.
Yes LS-120 and ls-240 drive can be used as a floppy A: drive. but frmating a LS-120 or using an ls-120 disk in dos/9x needs drivers. but you can still use 1.44mb disk.

On a machine with a BIOS option for LS120 boot, I was able to boot into plain DOS using an LS120 disk that had an appropriate image copied to it. That was one of the few things I tried using those disks. But that does depend on using a motherboard that has the BIOS option.

LS120 driver also do a much better job at reading disks, there abit faster and tend to be able to read damage floppy's a lot better.

My experience with testing this has been limited, but at least for me the older F733-1 model Matsushita was a bit of a letdown. The F933-1 was very impressive though. I think I'd stick to those (or other "2X" generation drives) and not bother with an earlier model like the F733-1, where the error handling seems to just be "good" instead of revolutionary.
My F733-1 was better at data recovery than one of my conventional drives, but it was worse than another. The F933-1 is the one that was vastly superior for data recovery and also blew the others away in speed. I love that drive.
Admittedly with the F733-1 I'm dealing with a sample size of 1 though, so maybe mine is just a dud.

shamino wrote:

On a machine with a BIOS option for LS120 boot, I was able to boot into plain DOS using an LS120 disk that had an appropriate image copied to it. That was one of the few things I tried using those disks. But that does depend on using a motherboard that has the BIOS option.

I never had problems with motherboard that lacked ls120 boot setting a ls120 drive to A:/B: or booting. if its a PATA drive just set it boot as a hdd. if its a FFD ls120 drive you don't need to do anything.

The system that will use the drive is a 1993 Gateway 2000 4SX-33 desktop. Any experience testing LS-120 drives in these? How's Bios support? Though they probably pre-date LS-120...

Without any shadow of a doubt the DSDD disks are considerably more reliable over time than the DSHD disks ever were.

I used the DSDD disks in my Amiga 500, formatted to 880k in that machine, about 90% of them are still perfectly ok. Old DSHD disks You may as well throw them in the bin
as the majority will have bad sectors. Fortunately though I have plenty of new HD disks, far more than I'll ever need.

Hmm.. In my personal experience HD and DD types were often equally good.
I've got several 5.25" 1.2M diskettes which still work fine.
A proper storage is also important for the life time of a floppy, I think.
I assume you have used protective covers for 3.5" floppies like you did for 5.25" types. 😉
Besides, it is also important to keep the floppy drives clean.
A dirty drive will turn good floppies into bad floppies.

Oh, and please don't put 1.44M floppies into a low-tec Amiga drive.
That tape method never really worked.. 😉

How are we supposed to store floppies? If I simply leave them on my desk they all seem to die. I think they last longer if you store them in the paper box they came in, or one of those plastic floppy cases.

Jo22 wrote:

Hmm.. In my personal experience HD and DD types were often equally good. I've got several 5.25" 1.2M diskettes which still work […]
Show full quote

Hmm.. In my personal experience HD and DD types were often equally good.
I've got several 5.25" 1.2M diskettes which still work fine.
A proper storage is also important for the life time of a floppy, I think.
I assume you have used protective covers for 3.5" floppies like you did for 5.25" types. 😉
Besides, it is also important to keep the floppy drives clean.
A dirty drive will turn good floppies into bad floppies.

Oh, and please don't put 1.44M floppies into a low-tec Amiga drive.
That tape method never really worked.. 😉

1.44MB disks work perfectly ok in the Amiga formatted to 880kB, but I have a 8MB upgrade board with CF card so no real need except some rare
game that won't load via WHDLOAD.

My opinion of what disks were good and bad has probably been formed by what I used, but probably what happened was that the cheap disks
produced in the mid 90's onwards really were poor quality and didn't last well. I remember paying $40 once for computec branded DSDD disks, after that
the price dropped to $20 then $10.

computergeek92 wrote:

How are we supposed to store floppies? If I simply leave them on my desk they all seem to die. I think they last longer if you store them in the paper box they came in, or one of those plastic floppy cases.

Floppy disk thoughts & questions
Long-term equipment/media storage

Where to buy new enclosures for 3,5" floppy disks?

Paper boxes and disk boxes are good, too.
Or simply use a fresh shoebox. 😀

About anything will do - just make sure 5.25" types get no pressure.

-Proper Care Of Floppies-
https://www.csh.rit.edu/~kenny/misc/floppy.html
(Beware, that's a parody. 😉 )