Re: Restoring dead floppies

Chris Schram wrote:

 
Not all floppy disks are created equal. When my spousal unit did customer
support for an antivirus software company, she told of an infected disk
received in the snail-mail (a normal occurrence back then), that after
being analyzed, could not be erased by any means, even after several
passes with a powerful magnet. They finally resorted to running the disk
through the shredder.
>

There is one brand of 3.5" floppy disk whose prognosis is overwhelmingly
negative. These disks are typically found in a black plastic shell, which
makes them easy to spot. What happens is that the ceramic read/write head of
the floppy drive strips the magnetic coating from the substrate. Unlike in a
hard disk drive, the read/write head of a floppy disk does indeed contact
the surface of the media. Probably the binder or surface lubricant failed
after 35+ years, who knows? I rarely have this trouble with Sony disks and a
few other brands.

When you've got a complete track scratched off the surface of the disk, that
makes data recovery pretty tough! :-{

This looks like a pretty good article, and it treats several of the
difficulties that I too have encountered:
https://goughlui.com/2013/05/19/project-kryoflux-part-6-dealing-with-difficult-disks-and-drives/

As with many physical artifacts, the conditions of storage affect their
well-being. As a general rule of thumb, I say that if you store your disks
in the same rooms of your house where you are usually comfortable
year-round, then the disks will be happy too. :-)

--
]DF$
The New Apple II User's Guide:
https://macgui.com/newa2guide/