That they are still used in a critical infra item is a bit surprising. Getting new stock would be a major hassle.

This is probably my "I'm getting old" moment. Good lord.

People who grew up with or lived in the tech environment had access to lots of things.

YMMV. I’m sure a lot of people were shoving these things into backpacks, and this was post-2000, so the quality of disks for sale was poorer than it was in the 90s and 80s.

On the other hand, 3.5" disks have higher magnetic coercivity, which makes them less susceptible to data loss from stray magnetic fields (e.g. nearby motors).

Without having details on the specific floppy disks in question there’s no way you can authoritatively say they are unreliable. They absolutely produced floppy disks that were far more reliable than the ones sourced from the cheapest vendor possible some of us used in school back in the day. Ignoring the fact I’m guessing the disks in question aren’t having to survive life in a students backpack.

Is it because "long-term archival" strategies aren't updated frequently?

We switched them over to external USB enclosures with cheap SATA drives in them and never looked back.

One cost $100 another $1.

Then these tapes are typically write once read many.

They were designed to deal with floppy disk flaws consumers deal with.

Actually really cool to read about modern tape systems.

They absolutely mog the cancerous garbage that is NAND flash memory in terms of data retention. The fact that you can pick an 1980s floppy from the junk room and read it is telling. Meanwhile your average TLC SSD will probably get wiped in 3 years if kept in the drawer, and a QLC will get wiped in 1 year.

Reliability wise floppies are also better: flash memory leaks electrons naturally and gets shredded by radiation events, with temperaure accelerating these processes. Meanwhile magnetic disks are not altered by any normal magnetic field you could produce at home.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/nov/03/mogging-crow...

More info here: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mog

Say, the Siemens PLCs I earn my living programming uses SD cards which range from 64kB to, uh, 128MB, methinks.

They still work after decades, so clearly, you can get long term reliable flash storage; just don't expect to be able to store your 4k holiday videos on them.

NOTAMs, on the other hand? Go ahead!

SanDisk's Extreme Pro range will disagree with you on that front. I have never seen a worn out card out of that range.

If you compare the thumb stick that came free from a convention then compare it to a floppy that came free with a magazine. And in the end neither matters because they’re both cheapest possible junk, not fair examples of the tech.

Similarly, the cheapest led bulbs (put in poorly ventilated fittings) have crappy lifetimes, but that’s not the techs fault, it’s because they weren’t engineered to last, they are cheap crap. Well designed leds placed sensibly are vastly better than bulbs, but that’s hidden by the cheap end of the market

In cold storage, a hdd should last longer than an ssd

Check the logo on the picture on the right.

First, the cover uses italic sans-serif “I” characters, not forward slashes. It’s pretty clear if you’re familiar with typography.

Second, the body of the document uses neither. It uses the standard upright I character.

Call it weird if you want, but that's what the name was.

Second, the body of the document uses neither. It uses the standard upright I character.

https://archive.org/details/005a_Appleworks_Startup_Side_1

The fact people have old working floppies doesn't change the fact that degradation happens.

I wonder if quality control was bad. It seems like the disks that were good 30 years ago are still good.

I’ve bought some 15 year old floppies recently. They work. Had just to learn, that formatting them is required. In handling they are like SD-Cards.

Which is far better than the CDs, DVDs, Bluerays or records (you now…this big black discs with a needle).

And you don’t have to worry about network attackers. And we checksum everything from the network. For good reasons.

Source: go to any used record shop and find a copy of Chicago >5[0]. It'll almost certainly play, even if the music wasn't particularly good to start with.

[0] There are many copies of later Chicago albums in used record stores.

Say what you will about floppies. There’s something to be said for a system that’s air-gapped by default.

I’m curious also something like Stuxnet would fit on a floppy disk? They hacked the Iranian centrifuges via USB virus.

It’s like getting car jacked and the perp realizes it’s a stick shift so they panic and run away.