That's why I called it hard cased, and yes I have taken them apart and a HDD as well, the latter to destroy the platters

The only thing I had before the 1512 was a 48K speccy and the later +3 model

I started with a Compukit build-it-yourself (real build-it-yourself) computer. Learned a lot about soldering!

… and if you’ve ever seen the result of an IBM “washing machine” Winchester disk failing you’ll know why they call it “crashing”.

I am pleased to say they were not something I ever had to deal with.

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

… and if you’ve ever seen the result of an IBM “washing machine” Winchester disk failing you’ll know why they call it “crashing”.

But not as much damage as a Univac Fastrand drum breaking loose from its bearings and flying across rhe room and smashing through walls!

In reply to a post by The_Voyager:

The 5-1/4" floppy was common back then, it's where the name Floppy came from because they were so thin they just flopped around. I think it took a year at least before the hard cased 3-1/2" one came into being along with CD drives being added.

I am cracking up, no idea why i said that, yes, you are correct, I was thinking of the 3 inch disks
https://disktransfer.co.uk/IMAGES-fs/Amstrad-3-flopp...

I knew 5 and a quarter ones were around, I had them on my CBM64

Just ignore me, must be tired.

LOL, we all get tired like that at times

In reply to a post by The_Voyager:

The 5-1/4" floppy was common back then, it's where the name Floppy came from because they were so thin they just flopped around. I think it took a year at least before the hard cased 3-1/2" one came into being along with CD drives being added.

The 8 inch ones were much floppier... the 5 and a quarter were same just smaller. Then you had Amstrad who used the 3 inch in their word processor and CP/M machines and then the CPC and Spectrum +3, but it was the Sony created 3.5" that became the popular size. UK saw first in Amiga and Atari ST but globally it was the Macintosh that made the format popular.

For our younger readers, USB 3 was released in 2008 and so people selling USB 2 only sticks are to be avoided, as USB 3 is pretty old now at 18 years!

Steve Gibson's free utility Validrive is worth running on any USB stick given the amount of fake and cheating going on in the supply chains.
https://www.grc.com/validrive.htm

Useful little Tool, confirmed my thoughts about a 1 year old 4TB USB drive that I got for not much money from Amazon as being a Fake, all my other 250GB upto 1TB USB drives were all good, didn't bother testing my much smaller pen drives >100GB.