Floppy Drive

[sim085]

Hi,

This got to mind and I thought I just ask. After I got out my amiga again I wanted to test which floppy disks still work and which floppy disk do not. I had previously purchased Workbench 3.1 original disks and manage to install Workbench on a hard disk without any problems.

Obviously when I started to try the disks one by one - around a hundred - many of disks did not work. Most of them made that very painful noise before not working. The problem is that when I tried the original Workbench disks again the floppy started to tell me that there was a checksum error. However sometimes it does manage to load without any problem.

Do you people think I should invest in a floppy drive cleaner? Or?

[Thomas]

IMHO you should rather invest into a new drive. This "painful noise" might have moved the read/write head out of its normal adjustment. IIRC all my drives never did such a noise. They just moved the head to track 0 and back to track 40 and again to 0 and to 40 and then surrendered. No unusual noise, nothing like that of a 1541.

[sim085]

Mine does surrender but (I do not know how to explain a noise in words :$) only after like two consecutive runs of this noise (the noise takes only a second or two). To be onest I always remeber the drive doing so when inserting a corrupted disk.

Also all checksum errors from the good disks seem to disapear when I blow (to remove any dust) inside the drive. Then if I insert another corrupted disk, chances are that the good disk will also display a checksum error.

[Thomas]

Perhaps you should open the case and use a vacuum cleaner to remove the worst dust.

[dougal]

That painful noise like screeching is bad floppy disks.

With age (and Malta's humidity) the disk tend to get damaged over time.

Happened to quite a lot of my disks too Best is to store disk in a dry non humid place

[amiga92570]

IMHO you should rather invest into a new drive. This "painful noise" might have moved the read/write head out of its normal adjustment. IIRC all my drives never did such a noise. They just moved the head to track 0 and back to track 40 and again to 0 and to 40 and then surrendered. No unusual noise, nothing like that of a 1541.

Yeah, but noise and 1541 are normal. Like peas and carrots. Haha  Thats why you should adf all your disks.

[sim085]

Thanks to all for the replies. I was thinking of buying one of these;
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/3-5-Floppy-Disk-Disc-Cleaner-PC-Amiga-Dry-Type_W0QQitemZ290396663108QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Computing_ComputerComponents_BlankCDsDVDs?hash=item439cfd6d44

Is it worth it? or too old to do the job?

[save2600]

I would not recommend purchasing somebody's used floppy drive cleaner in a million years. Even ones new out of the box are not recommended. As Thomas suggested, open up your drive and properly clean it out with a small toothbrush/paint brush and a vacuum cleaner. Canned air failing that method. And then take a Q-Tip with something 'friendly' to tape and drive heads (I have used rubbing alcohol & tape head cleaner with great results) and gently swab the heads. Next thing that needs to happen to old disk drives are that the sensor switches near the front of the drive need to be cleaned. I use contact cleaner and carefully spray INTO them and then work up and down with my finger a few times to work the solution in. That way, you'll reduce the risk of 'no disk in drive' error and other strange high or low density probs.