Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!dptg!ulysses!andante!mit-eddie!mintaka!think.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!aplcen!aplcomm!uunet!gistdev!flint From: flint@gistdev.gist.com (Flint Pellett) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc Subject: Re: MEI / MicroCenter Diskettes (again) Message-ID: <1025@gistdev.gist.com> Date: 20 Nov 90 21:22:01 GMT References: <39963@ut-emx.uucp> <39970@ut-emx.uucp> Organization: Global Information Systems Technology Inc., Savoy, IL Lines: 29 awessels@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Allen Wessels) writes: >In article <39963@ut-emx.uucp> readdm@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (David M. Read) writes: >>So the failure rate is either 9/50 or 2/50, depending on how you look >>at it. Either way, the 79 cents/diskette price makes them much >>cheaper than they are bought retail! >Uh, can anyone out there shed some light on the issue of diskette failure >rate AFTER they have been formatted? If that many disks fail formatting, >how many are likely to fail later, when you have data on them? Especially >over time with changing diskette drive read heads? Recent history only: Over the past 6 months, using around 150 3.5" HD and 100 5.25" HD and maybe 100 5.25" DSDD diskettes from MEI, I've never yet had one fail if it formatted properly. (An error rate that is measurable is too high.) I have had an average of about 2 out of each 50 3.5" diskettes be bad on arrival, but I've called them up and they've shipped replacements for the bad diskettes immediately every time, no questions. On the 5.25" diskettes: I'd been formatting my DSDD diskettes to 800K regularly with several different brands of diskettes with no problems, but when I bought some MEI diskettes and tried to do that with them, about 90% of them failed to format. So I format them to 720K, and they work fine, and are still a lot cheaper than any other on a per KB basis. I've never tried putting more than 1.4 MB on HD 5.25's, so I don't know if you can do that or not. -- Flint Pellett, Global Information Systems Technology, Inc. 1800 Woodfield Drive, Savoy, IL 61874 (217) 352-1165 uunet!gistdev!flint or flint@gistdev.gist.com