Homicidal floppy disks?

Has anyone else had problems with floppy drives being wrecked by disks that have been stored long-term in less-than-ideal conditions?

I had a load a few years ago that "beheaded" a couple of drives before I figured out what was going on. I *thought* I'd thrown them all out, but it appears not - just lost another drive tonight to a rogue disk. It made a horrible squeaking noise and that drive now attempts but fails to read known good disks. Oh well, I need the soldering practice - another PC drive converted.

Has anyone else come across this issue? Any idea why it's happening, and can anything be done to rescue such disks?

I've never had a disk cause physical damage to the drive itself, that would be quite a sight. What I have had is for poorly-preserved 5.25" media to poop powdered rust all over the disk head (usually this is disks that have been in someone's barn or basement for 25 years.) Apparently it's magnetized enough that it sticks to the read head and prevents it from reading correctly. My solution has been to take a Q-tip dipped in rubbing alcohol and gently swab off the rust, then gently dry it with a paper towel. Works like a charm.

Hi!

The drives can be saved with a claning kit of by cleaning the heads with a cotton swab and IPA.

The problem is mould on the Disks, and you may be able to save them (if you have really important data) or else bin them.

You can try opening the Disk and cleaning the magnetic layer with a soft cloth and IPA.

If you use EAB there is a chap called Peter (forum handle Prowler) he is really into recovering data from old Disks and has posted lots of threads on the subject. Worth checking out EAB if you want to delve further into this.

Myself, if I come across a bad Disk I bin it, but I have nothing important on them.

My original Game Disks don't leave the boxes :roll:

All the best,

Steve.

Thanks for that - good to know I'm not the only one.

The disks have nothing vital on them so they're headed for the bin.

As for the drives - one of them scores grooves into any disk inserted into it - so I'm not going to attempt to rescue that one! I'll try the IPA trick on the other one though - I work at a printers, so IPA isn't exactly in short supply!

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Originally Posted by robinsonb5

As for the drives - one of them scores grooves into any disk inserted into it - so I'm not going to attempt to rescue that one!

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I had the exact same thing, mist have been sand or similar on the Disk surface (no idea how it got there) but had transferred to the read/write head and then damaged some of my Dizzy Disks :(

The Disk Drive Cleaning kit fixed the drive though :thumbsup:

Maybe the Disks in that batch I had bought from eBay were in a flood or something?

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Originally Posted by fitzsteve

The Disk Drive Cleaning kit fixed the drive though :thumbsup:

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Wow - really? That's worth knowing - thanks!

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Originally Posted by fitzsteve

damaged some of my Dizzy Disks :(

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NOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

My experience is that they don't tend to permanently damage the drives. I thought I'd written off a NOS FB-354 with a faulty disk, turned out that using a drive head cleaning diskette brought it back into full health. :)

Similar experience here a few months ago, FB-354 unresponsive after many years in retirement - in my case it started working after I tried many disks, but I cleaned the heads nevertheless. All's still good now.

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Originally Posted by commodorejohn

I've never had a disk cause physical damage to the drive itself, that would be quite a sight. What I have had is for poorly-preserved 5.25" media to poop powdered rust all over the disk head (usually this is disks that have been in someone's barn or basement for 25 years.) Apparently it's magnetized enough that it sticks to the read head and prevents it from reading correctly. My solution has been to take a Q-tip dipped in rubbing alcohol and gently swab off the rust, then gently dry it with a paper towel. Works like a charm.

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It happened to me some days ago. And it was not happy, since I was using an Oceanic OC-118 (which is not easy to open as a 1541-II).. A Floppy Cleaner solved it, but opening the drive to remove pieces of the floppy is necessary