Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!ncc!alberta!ubc-cs!faculty.cs.ubc.ca!manis
From: manis@faculty.cs.ubc.ca (Vince Manis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: SS disks
Message-ID: <2242@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: 28 Apr 88 15:33:47 GMT
References: <184chad@byuvax.bitnet> <50424@sun.uucp> <172@obie.UUCP> <4856@eagle.ukc.ac.uk>
Sender: nobody@ubc-cs.UUCP
Reply-To: manis@faculty.cs.ubc.ca (Vince Manis)
Organization: UBC Department of Computer Science, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lines: 27

I'm most definitely not an expert on disks. What I do know is that disk quality
seems to be highly variable. If you're as ignorant as I am, you tend to do 
a number of things:

1) buy a brand name you have some confidence in: with 5 1/4 inch disks, I used
to buy Dysan. I've been buying Sony microfloppies since they were the only 
supplier; I have yet to get a bad one, but that could happen tomorrow.

2) never save a few cents by putting valuable data on a cheap disk, or an SS
disk which has been formatted DS. This might work most of the time, but I'm
not confident it will work for me (Manis' Law: the probability of a disk 
failing is directly proportional to the importance of its contents).

3) keep backups anyway.

If I were not a computer scientist but rather an expert in magnetic recording
media, I might very well know enough to be able to spend a few dollars less a 
year on disks. But, being ignorant in these matters, I don't really buy 
assurances that "I've formatted 8 zillion SS disks DS, and never had a 
problem." Maybe so, but I don't want to take the chance. 


Vincent Manis                    | manis@cs.ubc.ca
The Invisible City of Kitezh     | manis@cs.ubc.cdn
Department of Computer Science   | manis@ubc.csnet
University of British Columbia   | {ihnp4!alberta,uw-beaver,uunet}!
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