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5.25-inch floppy disks expected to help run San Francisco trains until 2030 (arstechnica.com)

submitted 7 months ago by floofloof@lemmy.ca to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] herrcaptain@lemmy.ca 28 points 7 months ago (8 children)

"The system is currently working just fine, but we know that with each increasing year, risk of data degradation on the floppy disks increases and that at some point there will be a catastrophic failure," Tumlin told ABC7.

Have they literally been using the same set of disks for decades? Surely they can just ... make fresh copies on new disks? As far as I know, they're still being made for specialized industries just like this.

Certainly, they should upgrade their system - this just doesn't feel like the most important reason to do so.

[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 7 months ago

I read an article fairly recently stating that the last manufacturer of the 3.5 has stopped production back in 2011, and the 5.25 was over 5 years before that.

But supposedly there's a little business called Athana that still makes them, along with other really old and way out of date media's. Even 8" floppies.

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