4 May
2005
4 May
'05
7:17 a.m.
Subject: Re: Modern floppy disk question...
From: Richard Schauer <rws at ripco.com>
Date: Wed, 04 May 2005 09:07:26 -0500 (CDT)
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>
To add to the problem- why are modern floppy drives such junk? I was
recently doing a 20-disk transfer between two computers, and after the
second pass I had one disk that developed some outrageous errors in a
particular band of tracks. So I looked at it- the drive had scratched the
oxide off the media in a nice circle on one side around track 50. Didn't
do it to any other disks in the stack. This had happened to me before, on
other drives (all modern) with very little usage, and had never happened
to me using pre-1995-or-so hardware with tons more usage.
(All the drives I'm referring to are 3-1/2" of course)
Richard
I've seen this before. It's related to PCs having fans that suck dust
INTO the box usually via any opening even the floppy door. If you
had cleaned all the dust bunnies out of the drive it's less likely.
Now you will have to clean the heads of oxide and binder.
My cure, noisier fan (more volume) turn it around to blow in and
put an external easily cleaned filter. Many of the S100 systems
and other boxed and fan cooled machina also had this problem.
I've also seens plain bad media that had bad shed. Once the crud
hit the head it stays there till you clean it. Until you do it
scratches other floppies ruining them.
Allison