19 Aug
2007
19 Aug
'07
10:31 a.m.
Hi guys...
I have a truly huge number of old 3.5" HD floppy disks which no longer work.
Attempting to format them in DOS returns the largely unhelpful "Invalid
media or Track 0 bad - disk unusable" error message.
I'm guessing it's because these disks are old (pushing on for 20 years in
some cases, and I'm fairly sure they're *all* over 10 years), and they've
degraded over time, or the magnetic signals have become disorientated, or
some such technical explanation.... However, the result is, they're so much
plastic scrap at the moment.
Is there any device/program/machine I can use to restore these floppys back
to working order? I'm not overly bothered about keeping the data that's on
many of them (although if there IS a way to preserve it, that'd be great),
but they do still sometimes come in useful, and it'd be a shame to bin so
many of them.
Cheers!
Ade.
PS: Most of my old 5.25" disks, despite being up to 30 years old, are all
working fine. Similarly, most of my old Sinclair microdrive cassettes, which
are >20 years old, are also fine - at least, the ones where the little foam
pad hasn't perished are. Similarly, many of the compact cassettes I have for
various old 20+ year old home computers still work.... are 3.5" 1.44MB
floppies just inherently useless?
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15:48
19 Aug
19 Aug
10:50 a.m.
Ade Vickers wrote:
Hi guys...
I have a truly huge number of old 3.5" HD floppy disks which no longer work.
Attempting to format them in DOS returns the largely unhelpful "Invalid
media or Track 0 bad - disk unusable" error message.
Same here. Pretty much
all of the 3.5" don't work reliably anymore.
But 9-tracks from the 70's are fine, 8" and 5.25" floppies are fine.
Just plain weird.
5:29 p.m.
On Sun, 2007-08-19 at 08:50 -0600, e.stiebler wrote:
Ade Vickers wrote:
I have 3.5" disks for my Ensoniq Mirage sampler that are well over 20
years old. They work just fine.
I have brand new 3.5" disks that I bought for writing firmware update
images into. They last about three uses.
Gordon
Hi guys...
I have a truly huge number of old 3.5" HD floppy disks which no longer work.
Attempting to format them in DOS returns the largely unhelpful "Invalid
media or Track 0 bad - disk unusable" error message.
Same here. Pretty much
all of the 3.5" don't work reliably anymore.
But 9-tracks from the 70's are fine, 8" and 5.25" floppies are fine.
Just plain weird.
22 Aug
22 Aug
6:02 p.m.
On Sun, 2007-08-19 at 22:29 +0100, Gordon JC Pearce wrote:
On Sun, 2007-08-19 at 08:50 -0600, e.stiebler wrote:
Er. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? I posted this about a week ago...
Gordon
Ade Vickers wrote:
I have 3.5" disks for my Ensoniq Mirage sampler that are well over 20
years old. They work just fine. Hi guys...
I have a truly huge number of old 3.5" HD floppy disks which no longer work.
Attempting to format them in DOS returns the largely unhelpful "Invalid
media or Track 0 bad - disk unusable" error message.
Same here. Pretty much
all of the 3.5" don't work reliably anymore.
But 9-tracks from the 70's are fine, 8" and 5.25" floppies are fine.
Just plain weird. 
19 Aug
19 Aug
10:59 a.m.
On 19 Aug 2007 at 15:31, Ade Vickers asked:
.... are 3.5" 1.44MB floppies just inherently
useless?
Once written, 3.5" DSHD floppies seem to retain their information
well enough; they just don't like being rewritten. Degaussing
sometimes helps temporarily reclaim a floppy for another use.
If you search the list archives, you've heard me rant on this
subject. The short answer is "pretty much". I've been able to
recycle a number of bad 1.44MB by covering over the density-indicator
aperture and using them as 720K. But even that doesn't work on all
of them.
On the other hand, the failure rate of 720K DS2D diskettes is
substantially lower than that of DSHD.
If you place the floppy on a tabletop so that the exposed hub faces
down, they make decent coasters on which to place drinks. I suppose
one could use the disks to shim up a leg on a wobbly table. Like old
CDs, I'm always looking for new uses for 3.5" floppies.
For what it's worth, I've had the same experience as you with 5.25"
floppies--they tend to hold onto data better. Last week, I got a
conversion job in where a number of 5.25" DSHD diskettes were
mistakenly written 20 years ago in a Kaypro 10. I had a bad feeling
in my gut about that--5.25 HD media differs considerably in its
magnetic characteristics from 2D media. Yet I encountered only a
single read error--and that was in a backup file. Out of the 300
diskettes on that job so far, I've yet to encounter another
unrecoverable error--and many of the diskettes have obviously been
recycled from other uses.
8" floppies tend to be even more tenacious than 5.25". I routinely
process media that was written more than 30 years ago without
problems.
Cheers,
Chuck
8:22 p.m.
.... are
3.5" 1.44MB floppies just inherently useless?
Once written, 3.5" DSHD
floppies seem to retain their information
well enough; they just don't like being rewritten. Degaussing
sometimes helps temporarily reclaim a floppy for another use.
8:55 p.m.
On 19 Aug 2007 at 19:22, Dave Dunfield wrote:
Windows and even "bare" DOS try and read
block 0 to see what kind of
disk it is - if it's unreadable in a certain way, it fails with "track
0 bad" ... You can't even format these disks.
Well, DOS 6.x had the /f switch on the FORMAT command--which told DOS
to forget about trying to read the disk, just format it. I believe
that DOS 7.x ignores /f. And for DOS, there are always third-party
formatters.
Cheers,
Chuck
20 Aug
20 Aug
12:39 a.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
Well, DOS 6.x had the /f switch on the FORMAT
command--which told DOS
to forget about trying to read the disk, just format it. I believe
that DOS 7.x ignores /f. And for DOS, there are always third-party
formatters.
I think you're referring to the /u switch, not /f. /f was used as a
shortcut to the size (ie. /F:720 was the same as /T:80 /N:9)
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
12:55 a.m.
Jim Leonard wrote:
Chuck Guzis wrote:
Yes, it's /u for "unconditional".
Peace... Sridhar
Well, DOS 6.x had the /f switch on the FORMAT
command--which told DOS
to forget about trying to read the disk, just format it. I believe
that DOS 7.x ignores /f. And for DOS, there are always third-party
formatters.
I think you're referring to the /u switch, not /f. /f was used as a
shortcut to the size (ie. /F:720 was the same as /T:80 /N:9) 
8:18 a.m.
Windows and
even "bare" DOS try and read block 0 to see what kind of
disk it is - if it's unreadable in a certain way, it fails with "track
0 bad" ... You can't even format these disks.
Well, DOS 6.x had the /f switch on the FORMAT command--which told DOS
to forget about trying to read the disk, just format it. I believe
that DOS 7.x ignores /f. And for DOS, there are always third-party formatters.
Exactly which is why I suggested ImageDisk - with a blank disk
image, it's basically a third-party formatter. Anything that will
format the disk without having to read it first (not even a little)
should work.
Dave
--
dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com Collector of vintage computing equipment:
http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html
19 Aug
19 Aug
11:33 p.m.
On Sunday 19 August 2007 10:31, Ade Vickers wrote:
PS: Most of my old 5.25" disks, despite being up
to 30 years old, are all
working fine. Similarly, most of my old Sinclair microdrive cassettes,
which are >20 years old, are also fine - at least, the ones where the
little foam pad hasn't perished are. Similarly, many of the compact
cassettes I have for various old 20+ year old home computers still work....
are 3.5" 1.44MB floppies just inherently useless?
Not in my experience, but it seems that a fair number of drives are. I've
had bad luck with some brands, and try to stay away from them, including
one Alps that let the magic smoke out on first powerup, and assorted Mitsumi
and some others. If I can, I prefer Sony, they seem a bit more reliable,
though there are no doubt some others. Got a whole box of drives around so
if one won't read/format a floppy I'll try another before I assume that the
problem is with the floppy rather than the drive. For whatever that's
worth...
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
20 Aug
20 Aug
6:04 p.m.
Not in my experience, but it seems that a fair number
of drives are. I'=
ve=20
had bad luck with some brands, and try to stay away from them, includin=
g=20
one Alps that let the magic smoke out on first powerup, and assorted Mit=
sumi=20
and some others. If I can, I prefer Sony, they seem a bit more reliabl=
e, =20
though there are no doubt some others. Got a whole box of drives around =
I've had a lot of success with Teac drives. Of course I also like the
full-height Sony's (600 rpm spindles), but that's becuase I'm an HP
enthusiast...
The less said about 'generic' drives the better. I've had some come from
the factory that were _wildly_ out of elignment (I don't mean on the edge
when you stick a CE disk in, I mean way out!). Oh they probably read
their own disk fine, but I wouldn't think you could interchange disks
with anohter drive.
I learnt the hard way to stick an alignment disk in every drive I bought
and see just how good it is...
-tony
21 Aug
21 Aug
12:09 p.m.
On Monday 20 August 2007 18:04, Tony Duell wrote:
I got alignment disks way back when for 5.25" drives, but never got a hold of
one for the 3.5" form factor, nor 8"...
Are these even still available anywhere?
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
Not in my
experience, but it seems that a fair number of drives are.
I'= ve=20
had bad luck with some brands, and try to stay away from them,
includin= g=20
one Alps that let the magic smoke out on first powerup, and assorted
Mit= sumi=20
and some others. If I can, I prefer Sony, they seem a bit more
reliabl= e, =20
though there are no doubt some others. Got a whole box of drives around
=
I've had a lot of success with Teac drives. Of course I also like the
full-height Sony's (600 rpm spindles), but that's becuase I'm an HP
enthusiast...
The less said about 'generic' drives the better. I've had some come from
the factory that were _wildly_ out of elignment (I don't mean on the edge
when you stick a CE disk in, I mean way out!). Oh they probably read
their own disk fine, but I wouldn't think you could interchange disks
with anohter drive.
I learnt the hard way to stick an alignment disk in every drive I bought
and see just how good it is... 
1:56 p.m.
I got alignment disks way back when for 5.25"
drives, but never got a
hold of
one for the 3.5" form factor, nor 8"...
Are these even still available anywhere?
Seems that dysan still sells them. I have a 3.5" disk that needs the
"interrogator.exe" program, but I just cannot find it anywhere, and my
original disks are lost (I also had the 5 1/4" disks)
2:35 p.m.
On 21 Aug 2007 at 14:56, Alexandre Souza wrote:
Seems that dysan still sells them. I have a
3.5" disk that needs the
"interrogator.exe" program, but I just cannot find it anywhere, and my
original disks are lost (I also had the 5 1/4" disks)
Hasn't Dysan been out of business for a few years?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysan
I wasn't even aware of the attempt to restart the operation in 2003.
Cheers,
Chuck
6180
days inactive
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15 comments
11 participants
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alexandre-listas＠e-secure.com.br -
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
cclist＠sydex.com -
dave06a＠dunfield.com -
emu＠e-bbes.com -
gordon＠gjcp.net -
ian_primus＠yahoo.com -
javickers＠solutionengineers.com -
ploopster＠gmail.com -
rtellason＠verizon.net -
trixter＠oldskool.org