>Most of my 3.5" floppies from the 90s still work fine, with maybe a few bad sectors.
I never experienced such durability of floppies. here 10% where DOA, and a disk which survived 3 years was a venerable older one. Maybe the warm, humid and dusty air in here?
My experience with 3.5” diskettes was too that they were unreliable- however the older 5.25” ones seemed a lot more durable. I suspect it has to do with the fact that by the end of their market-life 3.5” had to be made super cheap as nobody considered 1.44mb big enough in the late 90s and thus the quality of late-production floppies was low due to cost cutting.
3.5" floppies I think had a certain time-span (1980s - mid 1990s? maybe) when they were mostly good. Also double density disks always felt more reliable to me.
I never experienced such durability of floppies. here 10% where DOA, and a disk which survived 3 years was a venerable older one. Maybe the warm, humid and dusty air in here?