Re: Dying Apple 3.5 drive

[shack@deimos.frii.com (Randy Shackelford)]

In article <Pine.SOL.3.96.970317101320.21772A-100000@general5.asu.edu>,
Adam Myrow  <adam.myrow@asu.edu> wrote:

>It appears that my Apple 3.5-inch drive may be about to give up the ghost.
>Here are the symptoms.  I can read from disks fine but have trouble
>writing back to them.  For example, I can format a new disk and scan it
>for bad blocks.  None will be found.  I can then unpack a Shrinkit archive
>onto the disk and when I re-scan it, there are suddenly bad blocks where I
>unpacked the archive.  I can do this over and over and the results are
>always the same.  Sometimes, the seemingly good disk will report an I/O
>error in mid-write.  I thought I had a batch of bad disks at first but it
>happens with any disk I try to use.  This is frustrating!

I'd try taking the drive apart and cleaning out any dust wads in there. If
the drive dates from the ROM 01 era, chances are there's plenty in there.
Then a cleaning with a cleaning disk is in order. If none of these cure the
problem, I'd drop by the Mac forsale groups and look for a new mechanism.
You should be able to find one for well under $20, maybe even single digit 
dollars. 800K drives are junk to Mac types these days.
-- 
Randy Shackelford                                 
shack@frii.com