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Floppy sector repair software

E

Elvi

Experienced Member
Joined
Nov 23, 2011
Messages
275
Location
Munsala, Finland
Are there any other floppy sector repair apps than Flobo floppy bad sector repair v2.0?
It's a very usefull app and i've "fixed" alot of 5.25" floppies with it so they can be used again and yeah it remagnetises the bad areas and most of the times that's all that needs to be done.

Here' my trouble with the app, it needs a win NT based system to run and can only handle drive a: so if you have 2 drives for instance a 3.5" and 5.25" your forced to switch the cables between them and change the bios settings if you need to boot of say the 3.5" drive, getts annoying :S

Atm i'm running this app on win xp and as i said it's done me good many times, it seems to work alot beter on 5.25" floppies than on 3.5" for some reason even if it was made for those.

So anyone know any similair apps? not a app that hides the bad sector but one "fixes" it, and has support for 2 drives, a: and b:.
 
Buy a bulk eraser. Flobo is pretty much snake oil (Yes, I've looked at it in detail). It does an FM format to emulate an erase--you still have to LL format the floppy. Better to do a degauss (a real erase) and format again.

If a LL format has a problem with a disk, it's probably not gone forever, and like a bad penny will resurface at the most inopportune time.
 
I know what flobo does, i do real formats after it's done but the issue here is to find an app that handles 2 floppy drives not just A:
I don't even know how to degauss a floppy.
 
If you need to find a degausser, check around in junk shops for a videotape (i.e. VHS) bulk eraser. One of those will wipe any floppy in nothing flat.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Buy a bulk eraser. Flobo is pretty much snake oil (Yes, I've looked at it in detail).
Click to expand...
Ya can't argue with success, Chuck ;-)

Of all the resources we're running out of and unlike well whale oil, snake oil still seems to be in plentiful supply...
 
Well if it's snake oil then why does it makes the floppies work again, most of the time and i don't want to just erase the floppies, honestly doubt a degausser will fix them anyhow and no one has yet aswered my orginal question if theres a similair app that handles both a and b drives, in flobo you can't select.
 
MikeS said:
Ya can't argue with success, Chuck ;-)

Of all the resources we're running out of and unlike well whale oil, snake oil still seems to be in plentiful supply...
Click to expand...

I don't know, Mike. I spent part of yesterday reading over the "Free Energy" blogs. It's senseless to argue with True Believers.

Elvi, Flobo plainly says that it can't repair physical defects in the media--and those are responsible for the bulk of floppy media failures. If you can find a reliable source that has hard data that says otherwise, I'll consider it.

As far as doing what you need to, look for a CP/M single-density format utility that runs on DOS. If you can't find one, I'll throw one together for you.
 
Elvi said:
Well if it's snake oil then why does it makes the floppies work again, most of the time and i don't want to just erase the floppies, honestly doubt a degausser will fix them anyhow and no one has yet aswered my orginal question if theres a similair app that handles both a and b drives, in flobo you can't select.
Click to expand...
Like I said, you can't argue with success; if it's free and works for you, and lets you retrieve lost data, more power to you, as long as you're aware that if there was a physical defect then it'll probably come back and haunt you later. I degauss all my diskettes before reuse (also for security reasons) and any that show errors when formatting go into the wastebasket.

Have you looked in your BIOS configuration? Many BIOSes let you swap the A and B drives.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Elvi, Flobo plainly says that it can't repair physical defects in the media--and those are responsible for the bulk of floppy media failures. If you can find a reliable source that has hard data that says otherwise, I'll consider it.
Click to expand...

Didn't mean physical defect there's not many things or none at all that can fix those but it does fix magnetic errors defects or whatever.

As far as doing what you need to, look for a CP/M single-density format utility that runs on DOS. If you can't find one, I'll throw one together for you.
Click to expand...

if you can please do as i doubt i'd find one however i run this app on xp so if it can run under that it'd be prefered, i use this particular pc for much of the transfering stuff conserning 5.25" floppies and also c64 media

MikeS said:
Like I said, you can't argue with success; if it's free and works for you, and lets you retrieve lost data, more power to you, as long as you're aware that if there was a physical defect then it'll probably come back and haunt you later.
Click to expand...

oh flobo destroys all the data on floppy but atleast it heals the ones that can be healed... most of the time :p

Have you looked in your BIOS configuration? Many BIOSes let you swap the A and B drives.
Click to expand...
as far as i can tell this pc can't but i really hate to reconfig the system just to boot one or the other and it can only boot from a: also not b:.
i'd prefer if i could do it when i need it via windows preferably from the apps i use, also getting tired of switching the floppy calbe around, it's cramped in that pc, 2 hd's, dual boot system, 2 cd drives and 2 floppy drives heh.
 
That would be nice if it wasn't so that none of my xp pc's have the floppy drives there, none at all, maybe that page was made for xp sp0 and not sp3 :/
 
NEAT! i managed to find a program that changes the drive letters for you or in my case swapped a and b called remount, it works even without rebooting :D
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/drivetools_e.html#remount

So i set my 3.5" to a and 5.25" to b in the bios, perfect for booting and in win it's swapped :D and if i need the 3.5 to be a: i just use that program again.
 
Hi
I read this thread with the wrong expectation. I was thinking it
was actually used to read the data and be used to help restore
the lost data.
That is something I've done on both cassette tapes and floppies
my self but without tools to help. It is not trivial to do and not
something that lends it self to automatic types of code.
Using the CRC is the simplest level. Next is knowing something
about what the data is.
If I have a floppy with a bad sector that I must for some reason
still use, I as a minimum, mark it as a bad sector. I never would
consider reusing that sector for anything, regardless of what
was done.
Dwight
 
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Dwight--a fair amount of recovering data from a bad sector involves knowing how an MFM pulse train gets converted to separated data. One very common thing that happens is that a pulse gets dropped (media dropout). This usually causes one of two things (or both) to happen. (1) The data separator begins to count data bits as clock bits and vice-versa, so you get a piece of good data, then garbage. (2) the dropout may result in shifted data (right or left).

The best way to recover this sort of thing is to examine the pulse train from the sector and fill in data where appropriate (done by guessing). One can also repeatedly read a bad sector and splice together bits of recovered data. You may drop a bit or two in either case, so you need to look at the data as a whole, and make some manual corrections.

Sometimes you can pick up a duplicate of the data on other tracks (erased files) or in the "slack" area at the end of a file between EOF and the end of the cluster.

That's why good data recovery is so costly. But with patience, it can be done.
 
Hi Chuck
That is what I've done in the past. I wrote a simple program to shift bits over
ranges I specify. Usually the CRC or check sum is in relatively good shape
but bit shifted.
Knowing what type of data makes it much easier. Intructions have a differnt
look than say compacted BASIC code.
It is just that I've never see a product designed to let the human interact
with it to help patch the data.
Dwight
 
Well, Anadisk does allow for shifting right or left from the cursor to the end of sector, as well as complementing to end of sector--but nothing to try to interpret data bits as clock bits...
 
I've found there's even a market for dead 5.25 diskettes so don't toss them in the wastebasket after. Sell them on eBay! The craft people seem to love them... Make them into party invitations whatnot... *scratches head
 
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