On Aug 11, 10:34 pm, "Michael J. Mahon" <mjma...@aol.com> wrote:
schmidtd wrote:
On Aug 5, 4:00 am, "Michael J. Mahon" <mjma...@aol.com> wrote:
I would not start to diagnose with this mindset.
"When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras."
Indeed. I was skeptical of this thread, until the exact thing
happened to me tonight. Drive 1 started failing after the first few
disks in a stack; I started to wonder what was going on, and put in a
disk that worked just minutes earlier. I/O error. Ripped apart the
drive, got tons of gook with a Q-tip and 91% isopropyl alcohol. The
drive still isn't reading, so I see what others were saying about
drives seeming toasted. We'll see - I guess I'll go back and scrub
some more. Some disks did strike me as slightly abrasive going in and
out of their sleeves. Maybe I have that "abraded head" problem after
all! :-( I got out drive #2 and experienced the same thing. I can
only do this so many times before I run out of drives!
Yes, it can happen...
That's why I use my "sacrificial" drive for unknown-status
floppies. If it gets bad, I just leave its case off for easier
access. ;-)
-michael
Ok, disaster averted. Another cleaning, this time dabbing the
pressure pad with isopropyl alcohol and letting the whole thing dry,
and it's back among the living. *Whew.* The problem disks were
narrowed down to a batch of Memorex 2S2D disks with white labels.
Upon closer inspection, they do have a blotchy appearance...
especially after spinning the disk inside the sleeve a little bit to
see disk surface that wasn't showing through the window all these
years.