hmm long long time ago, we had some building work done and extended the building upwards, of course the weather turned bad over the weekend, with the obvious wet and gritty result, Luckily it was only a couple of days and the floppies were still wet. So I cut the sleeves off and rinsed under the tap iirc no agressive cleaning fluids needed. Then dried (tissue paper) and place in between listing paper to fully dry and keep flat. Then a clean floppy was cut open to use the sleeve and the data recovered. Also making sure the floppy heads were clean during the operation. Took about a day iirc. This was back in the days when the Commodore PET was THE computer at work. Dave Caroline

Yes I got lucky they weren't too dirty and no lifeform had started to use the floppies as lunch. Also depends on glues holding the oxide on, would be worth an experiment with soaking. Or keep dry (to stop lower lifeforms from spreading) and store till a good method is found. Against further storage is the fact that a dry atmosphere may also cause some damage to the oxide (dry out lubricant) or base material (some plastics outgas and go brittle). Dave Caroline

On 22 May 2007 at 16:54, Chris M wrote: If, as Al has stated, mold has invaded the binder, the disks are a lost cause. And probably not safe to keep around--there are some very nasty (read: dangerous to your health) varieties that can develop. Definitely hazmat-category stuff. When I'm working with old diskettes on which someone has spilled coffee (or even in one case, champagne), I use distilled water with a photo wetting agent, such as Kodak Photo-Flo. Rinse and allow to dry. Occasionally, disks will come in from machine shop environments soaked in oil. I've found that rinsing in ordinary paint thinner, followed by a water+few drops of dishwashing liquid, followed by distilled water+PF rinse appears to work just fine. But mold can be nasty--it sends tiny filaments into the binder and dislodges the oxide layer from the substrate. While rinsing in a hypochlorite solution will kill the mold, damage to the coating is usually irreversible. I'll proceed only if the customer can be content with "bits and pieces" of his original. Cheers, Chuck

Yes, hypochlorite is bleach. We use it at work (I work at a lab) to clean various things. Though the items that are cleaned have to be very thoroughly washed afterwards otherwise it can interfere with various analyses (eg. pH). The stuff we buy in is around 10-14% concentration if I recall correctly. Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk Chris M <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> wrote: I don't know what hypochlorite is (bleach?). An ammonia solution is good for cleaning certain types of gunk, but don't know what it would do to a disk surface. I guess if you're desperate though, you could try anything.