* Alan Eugene Davis <[log in to unmask]> [011026 19:59]:
> I've asked this question before, but never received a satisfactory
> answer.  Please bear in mind I live in the tropics, and cannot keep my
> diskette collections under any kind of standard conditions.

I'm in the tropics too, and floppy diskettes seem to collect some kind
of fungus or something that makes them unusable very quickly.

> Almost invariably, it seems,  diskettes more than a year old are
> unreadable.  Is there anything I can do to save them?  What physically
> is happening to the media that makes it (apparently) impossible for
> the fdd to read the disks?

The only solution we have found is to keep the floppies in plastic
bags when not immediately in use.  One-Zip type (with a zipper lock)
are very handy.

If you allow them to sit around, or even in non airtight containers,
the organic growth will get on your floppy drive, and eventually make
it unusable, even after cleaning.

In Belize, someone even documented some kind of organic growth that
destroys CD's!  Haven't encountered that, though.  Maybe it was
someone actually in the rainforest.

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