Some random thoughts on things to check: Could the drive have a ‘faulty' write protect detector? It might think the disk is write protected. It would allow the system to boot but would not let you write any disks. Cleaning that too might help.
Are all the voltages good to the drive? Although the +5V and +12V are used during read and write. Is the drive spinning at the right speed, there should be an optical strobe disk on the bottom of the drive to check? Is the head moving freely? Dust on the rails could prevent the head moving freely and correctly aligning during a format, to read the disk it might be good enough. From: M100 <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> on behalf of Chris Kmiec <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Reply-To: <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Date: Saturday, March 17, 2018 at 12:45 PM To: <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [M100] Can't format a disk with DVI I've cleaned everything, still a no go. I give up for today. On Sat, Mar 17, 2018 at 9:33 AM, Chris Kmiec <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Trying to make a copy of my system disk. I've tried formatting 6 different disks, all different manufacturers, all double density. It starts the process, starts flashing Formatting!, then after about a minute or so, it says FORMAT FAILED... The system disk works fine, it loads programs, etc. Any clue what to check for?
