Alignment disks, and the creation thereof

[Jules Richardson]

Mr Ian Primus wrote:
> With today's modern machining technology, it should definitely be possible
> to create a system to write new alignment disks.

The question that popped into my head was "how long will floppies last?" - 
there's no point creating alignment disks if the existing media's all failed 
and there's no new stock being produced. I'm not sure how much life floppies 
have left in them - 10 years? 30? 100?

The time might be better spent producing drop-in replacements for entire 
floppy disk units. It'll be sad when big ol' 8" and 5.25" drives truly are 
obsolete, but I suppose that day will come sooner or later.

I think I'll miss the death-rattle of encountering a bad disk block, or even 
the grinding/squealing noise as the surface of a disk falls off and demolishes 
the drive head. Any magical "solid state" replacement should really include 
audio output and the ability to randomly lose bits of your data... :-)