Here's a mystery for you... floppy disk destroying floppy drives?

[mk553]

I know this sounds crazy but...

A neighborhood lady asked if anyone wanted her old 3.5" floppies. I scooped them up!

I took them home and started with my USB floppy drive. Here's what I did:

I inserted some of MY floppies first, and it works (like it always has).
I inserted one of HER floppies...general failure reading. Ok, they're old, right? Let's try another.
I insert more of her floppies, still nothing.
I try reformatting. Nothing. (various messages, sector not found, general failure, whatever.)
I insert MY floppies, still nothing (usually 'general failure reading' or something).

Ok, maybe it's my drive. Let's move on to one of my vintage computers: an XT with a special board to read 1.44mb floppies.
Same exact steps as above, with same results! Now my drive no longer works with any floppies.

Ok, I'm into vintage computers, I have more floppy drives around. Let's take the XT apart, and install a new 1.44mb drive:
Same exact steps as above, with same results again! Now a new-ish drive I've kept for years no longer works!

Yes, I even try installing a third floppy drive, and it now no longer works.

I tried inserting one of those cleaning kits, just in case maybe all her floppies are dirty (they look well cared for, though). Still unable to read or format floppies.

Am I crazy? How is this even possible?

At this point, I'm thinking I'm just going to toss out her floppies and forget those. But what do I do about my drives in the meantime? What possibly could have happened?

 

[Stone]

Am I crazy? How is this even possible?

At this point, I'm thinking I'm just going to toss out her floppies and forget those. But what do I do about my drives in the meantime? What possibly could have happened?

The answer is actually quite simple.

Get your head cleaning disk out and use it.

 

[mk553]

Well, like I said, I've already tried that. No luck so far... Thanks for the suggestion!

 

[Stone]

Did you moisten it with the solution?

Run it through several cycles. It might need 30 or so seconds of running to be successful. Make sure the cleaning disk is actually spinning. It maks a distinctive sound that is quite audible when its turning.

 

[mk553]

Did you moisten it with the solution?

Run it through several cycles. It might need 30 or so seconds of running to be successful. Make sure the cleaning disk is actually spinning. It maks a distinctive sound that is quite audible when its turning.

You might be onto something... I took your advice, and cleaned it much more, A LOT more, and it's starting to read my original floppies now.

As I look carefully at the suspect floppies, it does look like there's some schmutz on the disk area on a few of them. That may have been the culprit...

Thanks again!

 

[maxtherabbit]

I went through a very similar incident recently. Old floppy disks will sometimes shed their oxide and coat the R/W heads in a drive with garbage. It's more of a common occurrence with 5.25" diskettes, but it occasionally happens with 8" and 3.5" disks as well. When it happens, the disk is basically trash. If you needed to recover data on the bum diskette it may be worth further pursuit but since these are just someones discarded junk toss it. Clean your heads thoroughly (in all the drives you tried!) and toss out the offending floppy.

BTW Just because one of her disks did it, is not an indictment of all the others. It seems to be somewhat random. Inspect them all visually before trying to use them. If you see gouges or debris on the surface, trash em

 

[Chuck(G)]

As a few of you may know, I process quite a few half-inch magnetic tapes, some of which are in excess of 50 years old. In addition to baking the tapes, I run them through a cleaning machine that uses a scary-sharp hunk of carbide (don't touch it with your fingers if you value your skin) to scrape off loose oxide and dirt from the surface of the tape. On old tapes, you also get a bit of lubricant (usually fatty acid) or binder that's migrated to the surface.

Some of the schmutz that comes off cannot be removed from the scraper blade with 90% isopropanol. It's on there hard. In the old days, Freon TF would have been used to clean the mechanism, but that's no longer available--and alcohol is a poor substitute. I've had to resort to MEK or perchloroethylene to get the gunk loose. I've found that the same applies on occasion to floppy drive heads. Both of the above are not plastic-friendly, so they're used sparingly and accurately. Offered for whatever this is worth.

I've long wondered why similar floppy-cleaning machines don't exist. While the jacket lining does get a lot of stuff, it doesn't get all of it. If you're dealing with old floppies, it's always a good idea to bake them (58C should be adequate) to re-form the binder and drive out any moisture. You can leave the cookies in their jackets. (It'll kill any Covid-19, too, according to WHO)

 

[Stone]

As I look carefully at the suspect floppies, it does look like there's some schmutz on the disk area on a few of them. That may have been the culprit...

Sometimes there's a visible ring around the disk near the outer edge. It's not glossy like the rest of the disk so it stands out and can be clearly visible. That's usually a good indicator that the oxide coating has started to sluff off in that area.

 

[Chuck(G)]

As I've mentioned several times previously, if the disk makes noise in the drive (e.g. squealing), remove it--it's shedding. Clean the drive head and then try to salvage the remainder of the disk by coating it with a thin film of cyclomethicone. I've managed to salvage old Wabash 5.25" floppies this way.

 

[SomeGuy]

Unfortunately we are at a point where it is is a bad idea to just throw unknown floppy disks in to a drive without first carefully inspecting and cleaning the disks.

Disks that have been poorly stored are likely to have residue or other gunk all over the surface. It may not always even be visible. This stuff can scratch up the disk as the heads plow through it, some may stick to the heads causing further read errors, and in worse cases it can be bad enough that a cleaning disk won't clean all the gunk off.

Usually when I first try reading disks that I have brought in, I use a drive that is not installed in a system where the heads are easily accessible in case I need to manually clean them.

I have yet to run in to a disk that will actually destroy a regular drive. Except for early full height Tandon drives, most drives can take some amount of abuse.

 

[bladamson]

I read something on a BBS years ago about some kind of trick that users could use on C64 BBSes that would actually set the disk drives on fire. Like most things on sketchy BBSes full of warez, it was probably sketchy too, though.

 

[Stone]

I have yet to run in to a disk that will actually destroy a regular drive.

I have literally cleaned thousands of floppy drives with head cleaning disks over the last thirty years. I have yet to encounter a drive that has failed to respond satisfactorily after cleaning. Some drives have required more rigorous cleaning than others but even the resistant drives were eventually restored to a fully functional state.

 

[maxtherabbit]

Chuck, what's the purpose of the cyclomethicone? Does it act as a lubricant for the head or does it actually stabilize the oxide layer somehow?

 

[Stone]

I read something on a BBS years ago about some kind of trick that users could use on C64 BBSes that would actually set the disk drives on fire. Like most things on sketchy BBSes full of warez, it was probably sketchy too, though.

This statement is vague enough to warrant ignoring it completely.

It has no value whatsoever without something specific, anything at all. Does anyone have anything of substance to enhance this claim?

If not...

 

[krebizfan]

I have literally cleaned thousands of floppy drives with head cleaning disks over the last thirty years. I have yet to encounter a drive that has failed to respond satisfactorily after cleaning. Some drives have required more rigorous cleaning than others but even the resistant drives were eventually restored to a fully functional state.

If the ball of gunk is thick enough, the cleaning disk could instead pull the head out of alignment. 300 RPM or 360 RPM is a lot of force against something that does not react well to force. My theory has always been if the cleaning disk failed the first time, open the drive and get a more through diagnosis.

 

[lowen]

If the ball of gunk is thick enough, the cleaning disk could instead pull the head out of alignment. 300 RPM or 360 RPM is a lot of force against something that does not react well to force. My theory has always been if the cleaning disk failed the first time, open the drive and get a more through diagnosis.

Especially true if the drive in question is a Tandon TM-848. These tend to need manual cleaning, and the heads are notoriously difficult to get at..

 

[Stone]

If the ball of gunk is thick enough, the cleaning disk could instead pull the head out of alignment... My theory has always been if the cleaning disk failed the first time, open the drive and get a more through diagnosis.

Thousands of successful cleanings (without one failure) over a thirty year period tells me that your scenario is so unlikely that it's not necessary or even useful for me to alter my technique. I prefer to rely upon real situational results as opposed to hypotheticals.

 

[bladamson]

This statement is vague enough to warrant ignoring it completely.

It has no value whatsoever without something specific, anything at all. Does anyone have anything of substance to enhance this claim?

If not...

Oh yes, I think it's complete garbage, but an amusing anecdote. :3

 

[Chuck(G)]

Chuck, what's the purpose of the cyclomethicone? Does it act as a lubricant for the head or does it actually stabilize the oxide layer somehow?

It's an inert lubricant that is also somewhat volatile. One needs only a drop or to to make a film on a floppy. After the disk has been read, the cyclomethicone evaporates, leaving the disk in its original condition. It's very slick, being a silicone-type (siloxane) lube, so don't pour any on the floor, unless you want to create a slip-n-slide. It's nontoxic and safe to use--you'll find it in lotions and hair treatments, particularly hair de-tanglers. Very popular with the equestrian crowd as well, being a treatment to dress up a horse's mane and tail.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

Oh yes, I think it's complete garbage, but an amusing anecdote. :3

I’m guessing it’s yet another strange corrupted half-remembered urban legend/telephone story that ultimately traces its origin back to the infamous “killer poke”. It seems like there are an unusual number of these horror tales floating around about Commodore computers; some of them are based on tiny little germs of truth, but blown up to fantastical proportions. (IE, some program that could, I dunno, bang the drive head against the stop repeatedly until it screwed up the alignment morphs into flames shooting out of the drive and instantly incinerating your computer.)