Old floppy disks

Disk drives, Monitors, SuperCPU etc.
Syrax
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Old floppy disks

Post by Syrax »

I quite often see "lots" of open disks, both commercial and copies for sale. My question as a "newbie" "returnie" to the scene, is: Do you think using these old, open, floppies present any danger to the disk drives? In many instances, the pictures of these floppies, show items that do not look exactly clean.


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Re: Old floppy disks

Post by BrianD »

Syrax wrote:I quite often see "lots" of open disks, both commercial and copies for sale. My question as a "newbie" "returnie" to the scene, is: Do you think using these old, open, floppies present any danger to the disk drives? In many instances, the pictures of these floppies, show items that do not look exactly clean.
Shit I hope not, I plan on buying mostly original stuff. I didnt even think about that. With the 5.25 already being finicky too
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Re: Old floppy disks

Post by metalfoot »

Depends what you mean by 'danger'? If you don't mind periodically cleaning the drive heads then it's not 'dangerous'. But magnetic media does deteriorate over time.
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Re: Old floppy disks

Post by Syrax »

But what would happen if you were using a dirty generic disk to copy a commercial disk, and some grit got on the head during the exchanging process. Could the grit not damage the more valuable commercial original?
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Re: Old floppy disks

Post by metalfoot »

Possibly. I'd suggest not using a dirty generic in such a case? Most disk copying these days seems to be of the kind of using a parallel nibbler and specialized hardware to backup floppies to error-free g64 files for permanent archival.
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Re: Old floppy disks

Post by Reflectiveroot »

You can also carefully clean an old floppy. I've taken some pretty bad floppies back from the grave (oxidized and/or molded). I prefer denatured alcohol, but others use isopropyl with success.

Be careful though when cleaning. Don't saturate them - I've found the soft cushioned interior will become abrasive and destroy the disk if it gets too wet. Dipping a cotton swab and rubbing it down works fine.

Or better, buy NOS and not really worry about it.
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Re: Old floppy disks

Post by e5frog »

Isopropyl can be a good way of cleaning up a disk before archiving it, expecially if you tried it once and had problems. Don't expect it to keep working though, backup on PC or new media. Rewriting the same data to the same disk is a way of refreshing the data, to rejuvenate it from the magnetic deterioration - not for original disks though. These should be archived properly and written properly with hardware that keeps the proper data. I think Kryoflux does the job... But I guess it would be hard to know without proper analysis as well, a 30 year old floppy may not have the same magnetic profile as it once did.

If you can spin the magnetic disk in the sleeve and not hear any gravel in there and no physical dirt on the magnetic surface then I'd just go ahead and try it. If checking a bunch of old used disks I might check the head for dirt before trying the next disk or one of my own.

As can be seen in this picture of a 1541-II, the head is reading on the lower surface of the disk, on the upper side there's just a soft pad.
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iced_nine
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Re: Old floppy disks

Post by iced_nine »

There is a gentleman on eBay that sells new 'old stock' floppies. They are $6 a box. I have bought several boxes from him over the past year and none of had any issues... I'll will provide the link to his seller list if anyone is interested.
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motrucker
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Re: Old floppy disks

Post by motrucker »

Syrax wrote:I quite often see "lots" of open disks, both commercial and copies for sale. My question as a "newbie" "returnie" to the scene, is: Do you think using these old, open, floppies present any danger to the disk drives? In many instances, the pictures of these floppies, show items that do not look exactly clean.
These days the best option would be to copy the disks: http://www.melon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=155
and then create D64 files (or others) and put the files on an SD card. This way you don't have to worry about the disks.
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motrucker
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Re: Old floppy disks

Post by motrucker »

I just learned a lesson concerning old disks. I was given a load of old game copies, that looked fine. The first one I tried fouled the heads so badly on my 1571 that it took an hour to clean the crap off, and get the drive working again! I used both a cleaning disk with alcohol, and q-tips also with solvent.
It looks like old, open disks should not be used at all - find another source for the software.
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