Most Common Problem With Floppy Disk Drives

From my experience, the most common fault is a dirty head. Open up the drive and clean the heads with alcohol. That sometimes is enough to allow the drive to read.

Keep in mind however, that there are several comments about drives used by Windows XP that encounter problems that other operating systems do not encounter. Most believe this is due to the formatting of the disks by a lesser OS. You might explore this possibility before you condemn your drives.

On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 12:36:05 +0000, Brad Has Frothed:

Dust or dirt on the head. Lots of air is sucked through the drive.

Age, combined with moving parts.

I paid hundreds of dollars for my first 5.25" drive in 1984, and the last time I bought a floppy drive it would have been twenty dollars. Nevermind that I can have all the floppy drives I want (and actually far more) out of scrapped computers for free.

That likely impacts on things, since they had to do quite a bit in the design to get those prices so low.

But also, that 1984 floppy drive was being used. I had no other means of saving things. Hence it didn't sit around for months waiting for some use, it got used every time I used the computer. The last time I used the floppy drive on this computer, it was months ago.

That likely means they don't get lubricated well, because the lubricant on the moving parts isn't getting moved around a lot.

And while useage may get things "dirty", I suspect the lack of useage makes it worse. The dirt piles up, and rather than getting distributed it just sits there.

Years ago, I got an old Mac drive, and immediately it was clear that the lubricant had dried out.

I was later given an old Mac, and they even said the floppy drive didn't work. But, once I opened it, it was clear there was no way it could work, even if it had at some point, because it was just to clogged up with dirt that had been sucked through. And likely beyond a certain point, that dirt caused other problems besides lack of movement; if the dirt jammed things, then other parts would try to compensate and burn out.

That said, unlike the old days floppy drives are generally cheap, which is what we said the last time this question (or something like it) was asked here. WHen they cost hundreds of dollars, repair and clearning and alignment were worth the effort. But, now you can buy a floppy drive for next to nothing, and you might as well start fresh.

Michael

If the disks are stored in a damp environment they will have mildew on them. The mildew is transferred to the head making subsequent "good" disks malfunction as well. Clean the heads. A head cleaner disk will usually work well enough - no need to take it apart.

Magnetic VHS tape has similar problems in damp places - mildew just loves the recording media.

Clean the bad disk(S) if you want to try taking it apart. It is hard to clean the disk when it is badly contaminated with mildew (the stuff you can actually see). It is easy to destroy one while trying to clean it. Use your head - alcohol is a good solvent if it contains nothing that leaves a residue - soap and water works well - but give it a wipe with alcohol so you don't have any minerals from the water on the disk.

Store disks in an environment that stays dry and away from magnetic fields or keep them sealed with a desiccant, or switch to CDRW. Some disks seem more resistant to mildew than others - but I don't use floppy any more so I haven't kept up with them.

In article , snipped-for-privacy@defaulter.net says... |On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 12:36:05 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@verizon.net (Brad) wrote: | |>Hi, |>

|> I have three computers that developed problems with reading floppy disks.

A user who is a smoker can really gum up the works, as well as dust and dirt. Contrary to popular belief of the masses, non moving electronics components do wear out with time, especially capacitors.

Hi!

Alignment problems and bad capacitors seem to top the list of things I've seen causing failures. Gummed up or worn away grease can cause problems too. On drives that use them, I've seen some failures of the density detection and write protect switches... You can fix the capacitor problems if you want...alignment is a bit tougher.

For all the posters that have suggested dirty heads as a cause, I have only ever found a few drives that were affected by dirt or dust on the heads. In many of these cases, the drive was packed full of dust or lint.

William

Hi!

I just can't see that being a problem unless it is a very poorly made drive. The stepper motors that are usually used to drive the heads up and down the surface of the disk have a lot of power. Even when stuck they seem to be content to sit and hum or pulse with no lasting damage.

I have yet to see one of the "pancake" motors get stuck by lubrication failure.

Which is fine when your system uses a conventional drive. If it doesn't...then knowing how to repair one could be handy. And it can be done in many cases. This especially applies to users of older Macintosh computers and the IBM PS/2 line. (Both of which are still regularly used in the right circles.)

William

On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 00:24:17 +0000, William R. Walsh Has Frothed:

The only drives I've seen fail were full of dust/lint.

Head alignment or wear generally, but with brand new ones under 10 bucks in most cases, I don't think anyone repairs them anymore.

You are IMHO, very lucky. While a CD Lens cleaner has saved many a CD/ DVD drive from impacted dust for me, something gets on the heads of many drives that I see. I often fix up OLD computers (the last one was an 18 year old Mac/SE) and cleaning the heads fixed it right up.

I don't know what was on them, but using a cleaning diskette and 95% grain alcohol fixed it. Mac drives are special because the have autoloading mechanisms which gum up and need to be cleaned and relublicated.

Something also comes from the disks themsevles, when trying to read an old disk I sometimes have to clean the heads to read it.

I use the grain alcohol because at $4 for 750ml, it's cheaper than anything else and works fine.

Geoff.

On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 06:30:02 +0000, Geoffrey S. Mendelson Has Frothed:

And you can also mix it with orange juice.

Meat Plow replied:

Actually, it's cheaper than orange juice. :-)

Geoff.

On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 12:41:12 +0000, Geoffrey S. Mendelson Has Frothed:

Especially this year if you live in the US.

A smoker can be SOL with CDRW too. Coats the lens inside the CDRW, probably coats everything but leaves a visible film on the lens. Q tip and alcohol will fix that.