[BoorishBears]

I constantly had failed floppies.

I started using them as a kid, but probably after the world had moved on (I liked to tinker, and usually free computers were old computers)

Part of me wonders if the quality was "A shaped", where early disks were experimental, then reliable but expensive disks became common, then cheap but maybe not as reliable disks became even more common

[ghaff]

There was definitely a period, at least with 5.25" disks, when name brand disks like Verbatim definitely tended to be more reliable than cheap disks bought in bulk. The latter weren't that bad (usually) and it often still made sense to use them so long as you were extra-careful with backups.

In general, failed floppies weren't a weekly occurrence or anything like that. But a floppy that couldn't be read or at least developed bad sectors was not rare either.