--- On Tue, 4/27/10, Doug McNutt <[email protected]> wrote:
> But I do have 50 or so floppies that simply cannot be
> formatted. I can't find visible defects with a
> microscope. Does anyone have any information on such
> effects? Do floppies just get old in the absence of use?
Error reading track 0?
Try an alternating current videotape eraser on those. If they have a metal
shutter, turn the disk inside 180 degrees and give them a second shot.
Back when 1.44M disks were my primary method of offline program and data
storage, I'd always make two copies and keep them in widely separate places
because almost always one of the disks would spontaneously corrupt itself.
I dunno why that'd happen. I kept the disks in storage boxes, away from direct
sun, in a stable temperature, nowhere near anything magnetic but nearly always
one of the disks I'd need would be unreadable.
If the copy I used was OK, I'd check the other one. If it was bad I'd either do
an unconditional format and copy the files back to it or throw that disk away
and use a new one.
When I got my first CD burner I spent a lot of time putting stuff onto CD-R. I
still have the very first CD-R I burned and it still works perfectly. The
reflective layer is gold and the dye layer is dark green. Amazingly, one of
those ancient Mitsumi 1x CD-ROMs where the whole drive works slides out could
read that CD-R, but not the newer ones with the aluminum layer and pale blue
dye layer.
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