CompuServe Messages

No, they're just in cardboard boxes, and usually stored in basements. I've always wondered about floppies. I'd wished that someone did a deep, in-depth analysis of their modes of failure. I think there's conventional wisdom about what makes them fail, and I don't think it has anything to do with what actually makes them fail. For example, does a refrigerator magnet have the power to scrog a disk and under what circumstances? How does this susceptibility vary with temperature, motion, etc.? I've heard people say that static electricity could zap a disc. I've found that disks can get zapped after being cushioned in an inch of bubble pack, yet I've had more reliability from bare disks mailed cross-country in a plain business envelope for 29 cents. I have thought about transferring all that data to other formats, but in terms of parallelism and reliability, I have a hard time believing that tapes would hold up longer than floppies. Perhaps a one-off CDROM would be best.