SFMTA's train system in San Francisco is not only relying on humans to run it, but turns out that a floppy disk has been playing a key role for decades.
First several generations of hard drives really were awful and broke if you stared at them at them wrong. Floppies were more reliable, cheaper, and easy to get.
I’m not sure what time you talk about, but it must be before 5,25" 20MB MFM drives and 30 MB RLL. Which were way more reliable than floppy disks and diskettes. These drives were available in the mid 80’s.
By 1998? No, hard drives were standard and reasonably reliable by then. Floppies were headed towards the end of their lifecycle with a high failure rate due to cutting costs.
First several generations of hard drives really were awful and broke if you stared at them at them wrong. Floppies were more reliable, cheaper, and easy to get.
I’m not sure what time you talk about, but it must be before 5,25" 20MB MFM drives and 30 MB RLL. Which were way more reliable than floppy disks and diskettes. These drives were available in the mid 80’s.
https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/comments/x98scz/the_original_20mb_mfm_hdd_died_in_my_286_recently/
Maybe you are mistaking a few bad blocks that were allocated out in the allocation table, for being unreliable?
By 1998? No, hard drives were standard and reasonably reliable by then. Floppies were headed towards the end of their lifecycle with a high failure rate due to cutting costs.