19 Aug
2007
19 Aug
'07
11:16 a.m.
From: javickers at solutionengineers.com> > 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
Hi
I've seen case where if the disk has had an error on track
0, you can not even reformat using the format tool. The tool
is too smart.
In some case, I've taken a small maget and dragged it along
the surface of the disk to remove all of the original format.
It needs to make contact with the surface so you need a
method of rotating the disk inside the case.
Avoid scratching or denting the surface or it will be useless.
The other possible problem is that there is something on your
drives head that is scratching the magnetic material off.
If you've not cleaned the heads in some time, don't blame the
disk.
There are some disk that others have reported to have failed
but I've personally never seen one to fail without cause. The
most common on 3.5's is contamination of dirt from carrying
around in pockets. Next is dirty heads. I've even seen oily
fingers from small children.
If the surface is being removed, the heads will surely need
cleaning.
Dwight
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19 Aug
19 Aug
11:33 a.m.
I've had pretty good reliability with 3 1/2" disks, if
you keep the drive clean, and make sure that the disks
aren't dirty or have that "gritty" sound to them, they
typically work OK.
I typically use the fdformat (or superformat) under
Linux - you can have it format the whole disk before
going back and verifying, sometimes it might take a
pass or two before the disk verifies OK. Degaussing
the disks with a bulk eraser would be a good idea too.
But be sure that your drive is good and clean. I've
also had better luck with older floppy drives -
Mitsumi, Chinon and Teac drives seem to be very
reliable. Blow the fuzzies out before use.
Also, be sure your BIOS is set right - I had a hell of
a time a couple weeks ago trying to write a disk on a
PC here, it was just a simple boot disk, but I tried
four floppies, checking the image, reformatting, etc -
then I remembered that last time I used the PC, I had
a 1.2mb 5 1/4" drive as drive 0. Bios was set wrong,
and the whole time I was trying to write data to the
disk at the wrong data rate. Doh!
-Ian
1:29 p.m.
On 19 Aug 2007 at 8:33, Mr Ian Primus wrote:
I typically use the fdformat (or superformat) under
Linux - you can have it format the whole disk before
going back and verifying, sometimes it might take a
pass or two before the disk verifies OK. Degaussing
the disks with a bulk eraser would be a good idea too.
Most bad 3.5 DSHD floppies fail on the first track (track 0). As
that's the case, what you use as a formatting program doesn't matter.
The drive's not seeking to get to track 0, so a format followed by a
verify on that track alone will show most of the failures--and that's
what I use to quickly separate the chaff from the grain.
The sad fact is that most diskettes manufactured in the last decade
or so are pretty miserable. Awhile back, I purchased a few hundred
Imation "made in USA" DSHDs. Thus far, the results have been mixed.
One odd thing is that the boxes state "Lifetime Warranty, see inside
for details". Well, there's nothing inside...
Not that long ago I purchased 3.5" drives by the carton (Teac FD-
235HF) and still have quite a few new drives left over. The new
drives don't seem to do any better with problem diskettes than the
drives that have been used for more than 10 years.
However, all of my cases are positive-pressure ventilated with a
filter on the intake, instead of the usual (it seems) scenario of
sucking garbage in through the floppy and CD openings. So it could
be that your drives could do with a good cleaning. Freon TF is what
I use, but methyl or ethyl alcohol would probably work almost as
well.
On most computers made in the last 10 years or so, I suspect that the
floppy drive doesn't get much use, so wear problems should be a
nonissue unless you're recycling very old and very used drives.
If you want to see media that fails even faster than DSHD, try some
DSEDs on a 2.88MB drive (if you can still find the media, that is).
Cheers,
Chuck
5:14 p.m.
Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:>
The sad fact is that most diskettes
manufactured in the last decade
or so are pretty miserable. Awhile back, I
purchased a few hundred
Imation "made in USA" DSHDs. Thus far, the
results have been mixed.
One odd thing is that the boxes state "Lifetime > Warranty, see inside
for details". Well, there's nothing inside...
I used to buy Imation disks for use on my Amiga's (when they were working). After I
realised how crap they were (various failures) and how poorly made they were (simply by
write-protecting the disks I would break the glue bond between the casing and a visable
gap would appear on the underside). I bought 30 disks (3 boxes of 10) before switching to
Verbatim disks - a much higher quality casing and no errors at all on the 40 odd disks I
got before my Amiga's went down last year.
I believe there is there a way to read Amiga floppy disks on a PC/laptop, but it was on
backtoroots.org which has gone :(
Does anyone have the documentation for it? I really would like to continue with a project
I started last year which is on some of my floppies. I could start again, but that would
mean 100's of hours of work down the tube :(
Regards,
Andrew B
aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk
6:11 p.m.
On 19 Aug 2007 at 22:14, Andrew Burton wrote:
I used to buy Imation disks for use on my Amiga's
(when they were
working). After I realised how crap they were (various failures) and
how poorly made they were (simply by write-protecting the disks I
would break the glue bond between the casing and a visable gap would
appear on the underside). I bought 30 disks (3 boxes of 10) before
switching to Verbatim disks - a much higher quality casing and no
errors at all on the 40 odd disks I got before my Amiga's went down
last year.
I used to buy Sony 3.5" DSHD diskettes by the thousand. They were
passable, but newer stock is of lower quality than the old stock.
The sad fact is that there's almost no competition/demand for
floppies nowadays and you live with what you can find.
I was a big fan of Dysan floppies. Just before the Sunnyvale
operation closed up shop, I was sent a some alignment diskettes and
other goodies (such as a few Drivetec disks) by a fellow in their
support department who thought I might be interested.
Cheers,
Chuck
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