Having a clear out, I came across a lot of 1.4 floppy discs from 6 or 7
years ago so thought I would have a look to see what was on them. Tried
about 10 but could not access them (have never used the floppy drive on this
pc) Got the message "format disc" which also said the contents would be
erased on some of them and nothing at all on the rest. Should I just throw
them away or is there something I can tweak?

"Dorrin" <dba@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message
news:FtDOe.10651$jr4.6201@fe3.news.blueyonder.co.u k...

Possibilities

1 Floppy drive is crook.
2 The Disks have all got 'zapped'

Given you have not used the Floppy drive on your PC before, and it is
unlikely 'all' 10 Floppy disks wouldn't read, it's likely 1 is the problem.

There are other possible causes
(eg first disk in was breaking down and coated the drives heads with a layer
of oxide, subsequent disks will not read until head cleaned)

But for practical results your options are

1 Try another Floppy Drive
2 Try the Floppy Disks in another PC.

Cheers
Paul.

Dorrin came up with the following;:
Floppy drives nowadays are all, generally, 1.44m, in the past there have
been many different formats and capacity size so you might have disks that
were written as 750k capacity, 1.2m, 512k etc even though the physical size
(3 1/2") is the same.

ISTR that there used to be drives available that you could change jumpers on
to change their capacity, though ICBW.

Whatever, IMHO whatever was on the disks is probably no use today. I spent
a few weeks last year going through a box of disks, like 500 or so, that
were all supposed to be 'dynamite stuff a few years ago' [1], only to find
that of all the data and information stored on them only about 1%, if that,
was actually applicable today. It took much more time and effort to sort
out what was good than was economically viable, but the company thought it
would be a worthwhile exercise. They now keep nothing, and I do mean
nothing, that is more than three years old, except for statutory records.

[1] sales contacts and quotations etc.

--
Paul ...
(8(|) Homer Rules ..... Doh !!!

On Tue, 23 Aug 2005 11:09:25 GMT, "Dorrin" <dba@blueyonder.co.uk>
wrote:

Could be failed floppy disks but sometimes is just dirty heads in the
floppy disk drive.

Manually hold the FDD door open and look for the reading heads - some
8 cm back from the door, look like two small "blocks" each about 5 mm
square, opposing one another and about 7 mm apart. You can imagine
these clamping onto the disk when it is inserted.

Get a long pipe cleaner, bend it double to stiffen, and moisten the
end with methylated spirits. Rub the opposing surfaces of the two
blocks several times with the wet pipe cleaner.

Give it a minute to dry, the try to read a disk.

jd

If using XP there's a known issue reading floppies done under Win95/98,
something to do with 3 mode drivers, whatever they are.

--

Kenny Cargill


"Dorrin" <dba@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message
news:FtDOe.10651$jr4.6201@fe3.news.blueyonder.co.u k...

"PC" <abuse@local.host> wrote in message
news:JEDOe.5038$iM2.503883@news.xtra.co.nz...


What Paul said. Also, see if you know anyone with an older PC who can copy
the data onto a CD or other media.


--
These ain't Mentos... but they'll freshen your breath!
http://tinyurl.com/cr5ka

"Kenny" <me@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:defahk$srk$1@newsg4.svr.pol.co.uk...

I'm just a regular user, but I was wondering when someone would mention that
it might be an xp tolerance problem (which I didn't know for sure). I sort
of oversee 10 computers at my school library and the incidence of floppies
failing skyrocketed when I installed xp on all of them some time ago.

And why doesn't someone just say that floppies and floppy disk drives are
slow outdated, grime-attractive, trundling, unreliable and almost useless
capcity-wise. I can't see why everybody hasn't just switched to flash
memory. I mean why aren't flash drives promoted as the best way to fix a
floppy disk problem?

MM

"Kenny" <me@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:defahk$srk$1@newsg4.svr.pol.co.uk...

"Saddles" <memarksatcoralwavedotcom> wrote in message
news:11gnm4if813d2a@corp.supernews.com...
MM

Why not bin Floppy disks?

Have you tried to set up a 'modern' motherboard with a SATA hard drive?
Yep first thing you need is a (wait for it) a Floppy Disk with the SATA
drivers on it!

They will eventually disappear just as 5.25" drives have now disappeared,
but only once most folk have flash drives, drivers etc can be installed from
CD/flash drives and legacy software that only backs up to Floppy disk gets
retired.

Cheers
Paul.

On Tue, 23 Aug 2005 11:09:25 GMT, "Dorrin" <dba@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

recently, then you may also want to check the cables to be that nothing is loose or broken

Try reading the old floppies from a command prompt.

If Windows can format and read a floppy, then the drive is probably good.

Floppy Disk is Not Accessible, Not Formatted, or Not Recognized by Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=140060

Floppy Disk Formats That Are Supported in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=309623

"Dorrin" <dba@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message
news:FtDOe.10651$jr4.6201@fe3.news.blueyonder.co.u k...
I've read that this can be a problem with the "media descriptor byte"
read this
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;140060

Jimmy Dean wrote:
He specified that he's never used this drive before. What would have
got it so dirty that it won't read media?


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Saddles wrote:

Because that's not relevant to his attempt to poke around some old
floppies from several years ago.

He stated that he wanted to look around on some late-'90s floppies.
That doesn't mean his current hardware is outdated. It means the
information was put on a viable storage medium for the time, and now
it's six or seven years later. That he said he's never used the floppy
drive in his current machine shows that he's *not* still trying to use
old technology as if it were current; he's just trying to peek into some
archives.


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