On 8/16/22 14:51, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > Dysan disks were always good. > The early Verbatim disks were not. It was a long time before anybody > else, such as Wabash, made anything as bad. > To get over their own reputation, Verbatim redesigned, and came out with > the "Datalife" series of disks, which were good. And had hub-rings.
Early on, Verbatim offered two grades of disks. The "purple label" stuff wasn't too awful, but the "pink label" disks were a disaster. Wabash was an equal-opportunity garbage vendor. Even the half-inch open-reel tapes were terrible. I confess never to have used their QIC cartridges, but if they were also terrible, I wouldn't be surprised. There were quite a few disk brands back in the 5.25" days. Somewhere around here, I have a box of Kodak floppies that are warranted against failure. Kodak's deal was that if a disk failed in service, they would pay for professional data recovery. That one didn't last long. Brown Disk floppies had the distinction that the jacket was too thick for some drives--you couldn't get them inserted. Then there was Elephant and a whole raft of other brands that never survived. The funniest experience we had with hub rings was a customer complaining that using our software, a disk copied without errors, but then couldn't be read. In frustration, we asked to see the disk. After a few minutes of examination, it was apparent what was going on--the disk had *two* hub rings on one side, with one slightly offset. On the occasion that a customer requests copies of disks, our go-to brand is still 3M/Imation. I can't recall ever having been disappointed with them. --Chuck
