[Coco] Floppies and floppy drives

[Luis Fernández]

Floppy disk Bad, very old 30 year, find new disks and backup




> From: a.lagana at snet.net
> Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2013 19:11:08 -0400
> To: Coco at maltedmedia.com
> Subject: [Coco] Floppies and floppy drives
> 
> 
> Lots of old floppies, stored in a damp basement I know, I know :-(
> 
> I notice when I read them with my best drive (an fd-502), it reads one fine, then gives errors and I need to clean the head to do one more ok, but again the head is 'dirty' after backing up just 1 floppy...groan
> 
> So I wonder is it the media itself that is gumming the drive?  Or is it filth and 30 years of time?
> 
> Second query is floppy drives.  I have 2 fd501 drives (TEC) and 2 more ye-data 508 DSDD drives, a total of 4 drives that just plain suck.  They all have not been able to read the same floppies which the fd502 has consistently been able to read albeit with the issues seen above.  Aside from using an fd501 cabinet and controller versus an fd502 cabinet and disto SCII controller, the floppies themselves are far more consistently readable on my 1 fd502 drive than those 4.  It is annoying, I have run rpm tests, and have cleaned and lubbed those awful drives with no better luck.  I am thinking to just bite the bullet and buy new drives, but its annoying that 4 drives are such rubbish after 30 years.
> 
> Any ideas from the brain trust?
> 
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