Issues with 5.25" floppy drives

[kithylin]

Okay I finally got around to setting up the two 1.2mb 5.25" floppy drives I have here in my 486 at the same time last night to start testing... All appeared well with the first diskette, then I got some weirdness I'll explain and see if anyone can offer some insight.

I have two 1.2mb 5.25" floppy diskettes.
I have two (different brand) 5.25" floppy drives, both 1.2mb.

These diskettes were both included with some old software I don't care about and I just wanted them for formatting and testing.
Diskette #1 (labeled Disk 1 of 2 in the software).. if I place said disk in the 5.25" drive with a grey face plate, and tell dos to start formatting, it will start formatting, and complete with zero errors, no bad sectors and I can write data to said diskette. If I place disk 1 in the second drive with a white face plate it will start formatting and come up with "Track 0 bad or disk unusable".

At first I thought "Great.. I have a bad floppy drive that won't format." but.. then I pulled out Diskette #2 (labeled disk 2 of 2 in the software set) and put it in the second drive with the white face plate and it started formatting, and completed fine, no errors, no bad sectors. After format I could read and write to said diskette in that drive.
I then removed that diskette, put it in the drive with the grey face plate, and it would start formatting, complete, no errors, no bad sectors. Tried reading and writing from it, no problems.
Removed disk 2 and tried the white face plate drive again, started formatting again, completed, no errors no bad sectors, read and wrote fine.

So... I then tried disk 1 and it again threw errors in the white drive, but formatted fine in the grey drive.

I'm kind of stumped here... is my grey drive good and the white one bad? Do I just some how have a bad diskette? I don't have any other 1.2mb floppies in this format to test with. I just thought, if both drives worked correctly, they should be able to format any "good diskette with no bad sectors" at any time.

I also have a 360kb 5.25" drive I'll start trying to test later today, and see what happens with it.

 

[MikeS]

Have I got this straight:
Disk 1 works in the grey drive but not in the white.
Disk 2 works in both drives.

Sounds like disk 1 is marginally bad and the white drive is a little fussier than the grey.

 

[twolazy]

Sounds like one of the drives are out of alignment. You are going to need another disk from a known good drive to determine which one is off.... If the floppy completes a format, then its most likely not the diskette. Know anyone local with a good drive to format a diskette on?

BTW do not cross diskettes in 360kb and 1.2 drives. Alot of the times a 360kb diskette formatted on a 1.2mb drive will not read correctly in a 360kb drive, due to a different TPI (48 vs 96). Best you could do is format a diskette on the 360kb and read it on the 1.2's. Just dont format on the 1.2's and try to read in the 360kb. Most likely you'll get alot of errors and not know why (well you do now >.< )

 

[kithylin]

Have I got this straight:
Disk 1 works in the grey drive but not in the white.
Disk 2 works in both drives.

Sounds like disk 1 is marginally bad and the white drive is a little fussier than the grey.

Yes that is right... I'm not sure these are the only 5.25" drives I have in 1.2mb format

Sounds like one of the drives are out of alignment. You are going to need another disk from a known good drive to determine which one is off.... If the floppy completes a format, then its most likely not the diskette. Know anyone local with a good drive to format a diskette on?

BTW do not cross diskettes in 360kb and 1.2 drives. Alot of the times a 360kb diskette formatted on a 1.2mb drive will not read correctly in a 360kb drive, due to a different TPI (48 vs 96). Best you could do is format a diskette on the 360kb and read it on the 1.2's. Just dont format on the 1.2's and try to read in the 360kb. Most likely you'll get alot of errors and not know why (well you do now >.< )

Thank you for the information.. I was about to try testing that and I know better now.

No sadly I do not know of anyone else here in my area into vintage computers.. only me, so.. no chance of that :/

 

[MikeS]

I have to ask: if you only have two HD diskettes, why is this an issue? I wouldn't worry about the drives unless/until it gives you errors with more than just one diskette out of two.

 

[kithylin]

Well it's an issue because I was considering selling one of them and keeping the other.. I only need one, but if the white one is not reading correctly... I don't want to sell it if it's defective, if you get what I mean.

 

[twolazy]

Always the option of selling it on here as a working drive with a caveat that it will have to be cleaned/aligned *shrugs. Comes down to how valuable is your time...

If you just want the challenge I can send you a good working diskette for 2-3 bucks (unless your outside the usa, then may be more unless you dont mind snailmail). Covers gas, floppy and postage etc. Best I can offer..

 

[kithylin]

thanks for the offer.. I think I'll decline at this time and figure out what to do on my own I suppose... old drives are annoying to deal with sometimes.

 

[MikeS]

Well it's an issue because I was considering selling one of them and keeping the other..

Ah, OK. Mind you, if you hadn't tried that flaky disk 1 then you would have assumed they're both OK, right?

- If you format both diskettes in the grey drive, can you put a lot of data on both of them in the grey drive without errors?
- Can you then successfully read both of them in both drives?
- What does Scandisk have to say about them?

 

[kithylin]

If i format both diskettes in the grey drive, and fill them with data, using the grey drive, then I can fully read data on both diskettes from the white drive, and scandisk shows no errors on the white drive reading both disks (that were created with the grey drive). It's only when I try and format a disk with the white drive I see problems... I can even format both disks with the grey drive.. insert both of them one at a time (empty) into the white drive, fill them with data using the white drive, and have no issues.. then read them back with the grey drive and still no issues... it's only formatting with the white one that shows any problem. This is so unusual to me... I'm not sure. And they're both using the same cable, and I've tried swapping floppy cables for another one and the issue is unchanged.

 

[twolazy]

Try cleaning the heads, maybe they are marginally dirty? And if its an older belt drive, dbl check the belt isnt slipping. If the heads are worm drive, clean the worm drive gear, and relube. Sometimes crud gets at the start and end spots and can cause a problem like your describing. =)