Broken floppy disks

Hi folks, OK, lots of interesting info there.... I'd better do a small update: I finally found a working disk (2, actually) - one, luckily, has a copy of DOS6.22 on it :) Which was good; the whole purpose of this exercise (a bit off-topic, I'm afraid) was to apply the "no_f1" patch to a Compaq running linux. The "track 0" problem & drives: I've had this issue, on & off, since before Y2000. It's been getting steadily worse as the disks age. This is across multiple PCs, multiple different floppy drives, and so on. I must admit, I don't have a 3.5" head cleaner; and dust ingress could be a significant factor. I was expecting the heads to be a bit mucky, so I ran a "known scrap" disk through the drive a few times, before going looking for a "proper" one. There's no evidence of scratching on any of the disks I tried, so I don't believe they're suffering from gritty dust; maybe an accumulation of general detrieus? The disks themselves are kept in their form-fitting plasticised-cardboard boxes, and are pretty clean for their age. I also have several 720k disks, kept in the same environment, and a few 720k drives, also NOT kept dust-free. These, despite their similar or greater age to the 1440k disks, all work (at least, all the ones I tested). Having said about the 5.25" disks - I've realised that not all is quite sweetness & light.... I have lots of DSDD *drives* here, with various machines, but almost no DSDD *disks* - most of the disks are DSHD.... and they generally simply will not format on a DD drive.... Does anyone (in the UK) have a good source of 5.25" DSDD disks? Cheers, Ade. PS: Thanks for all the replies; a) I'm glad it's not just me!, and b) some good things to try, when I get some time next weekend. No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.484 / Virus Database: 269.12.0/961 - Release Date: 19/08/2007 07:27