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New old stock floppies loosing data...

A

Adventurer

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The problem is - I bought a new old stock Maxell 8 inch floppies for IBM Displaywriter. One week ago I made 3 main program copies from master disk. Now, two of them will not read in any drive, one reads, but with errors sometimes. I thought the drive heads are dirty or there are alignment problems, however - tried the master disk - reads fine/system loads in both drives. One week ago all three floppies were working fine, and system was booting with no problems.

If I reformat/rewrite the copies, they start to work normally (for a limited time though it seems, and there are no sector errors). Anyone else had a similar experience? This took me by surprise, I did not think about floppies loosing data in one week or so...
 
Do you have a magnetised disk head? Do the disks get too close to a CRT, or other source of magnetism? Bear in mind that super strong magnets are everywhere these days.

Are the disks shedding?
 
KC9UDX said:
Do you have a magnetised disk head? Do the disks get too close to a CRT, or other source of magnetism? Bear in mind that super strong magnets are everywhere these days.

Are the disks shedding?
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The disks are not shedding, but yes - floppy box was about 5 inch from a side of CRT, not front...
 
Some floppies are just not as reliable as others. There are those that will seemingly last nearly forever and those that are flakey right out of the box. It's the nature of the beast.

If you have another batch of floppies, try some from there.
 
Silly question, but, are you powering up the drive or controller with a disk inserted?
 
If the drive is external, that's a good point. Always power the host before the drive--otherwise, all of those active-low signals on the drive, such as "write gate" will be active and clobber any disk still in the drive.
 
Chuck(G) said:
If the drive is external, that's a good point. Always power the host before the drive--otherwise, all of those active-low signals on the drive, such as "write gate" will be active and clobber any disk still in the drive.
Click to expand...

Well, IBM Displaywriter powers everything on Power on - drives included. Still, I made a little experiment - formatted/writed/booted the worst floppy I had, and just left in the disk drive overnight. In the morning I removed it before switching the machine on, inserted - no longer works/reads/boots by none of the drives. I do not think there should be permanent source of magnetism inside a drive itself if it is not powered, but I do suspect the particular floppies are demagnetizing in an an extremely fast rate, and it does not helps much if I store them outside. No shedding, clean, but not able to retain data for any prolonged time...

Actually I was tempted to leave the floppies inside the drives, since it is not very convenient to remove/reinsert them each time, but I think I should change my habit. I thought it would be safer not to move, since, plastic floppy disk cover itself starts to crack in places. The more I move them, the worse it gets...
 
The head can be magnetised (common), and it could be very weak writing. Do you have any other disks to compare? Do you have any other system to read or write with?
 
KC9UDX said:
The head can be magnetised (common), and it could be very weak writing. Do you have any other disks to compare? Do you have any other system to read or write with?
Click to expand...

I was able to write a bootable image to one Verbatim floppy, so now I have something to compare with. I have a PC with 8 inch drive connected, but so far I can only get data from a floppy, not the other way due to controller incompatibility. Let's see how it goes compared to a Maxell...

If it is a weak writing, can it be corrected somehow?
 
Stone said:
I still think that you have some good disks and some bad disks. Elementary but likely.
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...Especially if they crack when you insert/remove them; they don't sound like the best quality/condition ;-)

Do they read correctly if you read them several times immediately after writing them?
 
Stone said:
I still think that you have some good disks and some bad disks. Elementary but likely.
Click to expand...


Yes, could be true, but given the fact that 8 inch floppies are becoming harder to find, it is interesting to find out, which brand/model is worst and which one is the best. So far it seems I can only give Maxell thumbs down...
 
Adventurer said:
Yes, could be true, but given the fact that 8 inch floppies are becoming harder to find, it is interesting to find out, which brand/model is worst and which one is the best. So far it seems I can only give Maxell thumbs down...
Click to expand...

Not that hard to find; I've got a few hundred and have generally found all brands to be pretty reliable.
 
MikeS said:
Not that hard to find; I've got a few hundred and have generally found all brands to be pretty reliable.
Click to expand...

Generally, that's true--the track record for 8" media has tended to be much better than that for 3.5". Of course, a box of 10 8" floppies would set you back about $50 back in the day...
 
MikeS said:
...Especially if they crack when you insert/remove them; they don't sound like the best quality/condition ;-)

Do they read correctly if you read them several times immediately after writing them?
Click to expand...

Yes, they read correctly several times, and then the data is lost. Not completely though, but to the fact that system is unable to boot from it. It can still see the volume label, and partially access the data.
 
Adventurer said:
Yes, they read correctly several times, and then the data is lost. Not completely though, but to the fact that system is unable to boot from it. It can still see the volume label, and partially access the data.
Click to expand...
That makes them unreliable, at best, and that means...
 
Chuck(G) said:
If the drive is external, that's a good point. Always power the host before the drive--otherwise, all of those active-low signals on the drive, such as "write gate" will be active and clobber any disk still in the drive.
Click to expand...

Are there known cases of drives that writes on power-down? I've sure seen plenty that light up and start to spin.
 
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