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Washing 5.25" floppy disks

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linuxlove

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going through my 5.25" disks to make images of stuff while i can, i ran across two disks that had gunk on them. reading tezza's article on cleaning floppy disks, i just have two questions: first how do you cut the disks open and second, do you use warm or cold soapy water?
 
linuxlove said:
going through my 5.25" disks to make images of stuff while i can, i ran across two disks that had gunk on them. reading tezza's article on cleaning floppy disks, i just have two questions: first how do you cut the disks open and second, do you use warm or cold soapy water?
Click to expand...

I don't know what he specifically recommends, but when I've done it before, I've moved the disk in the jacket to one far side of the jacket, and then taken a hobby knife and sliced the jacket open letter opener style on the opposite side.
 
Most 5 1/4" disks (and 8" for that matter) were placed inside a folded envelope. Look for the fold, run a small knife gently along the fold to break the glue, and the pocket should open right up and the disk will slide out. Depending on your drives, you may have to open up another disk cover to insert the cleaned disk inside a clean shell.

There are other ways of open a disk envelope which could be necessary if you can't break the seal or if the disk used an unusual shell design. Some install disks I have lack any visible seam or obvious place to open the shell. For those, I would force the disk media to one side and then carefully cut into the other side with scissors. With luck, I won't end up cutting the disk media.
 
linuxlove said:
going through my 5.25" disks to make images of stuff while i can, i ran across two disks that had gunk on them. reading tezza's article on cleaning floppy disks, i just have two questions: first how do you cut the disks open and second, do you use warm or cold soapy water?
Click to expand...

Open the disk as others have said. Use warm water (not hot).

Tez
 
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