Re: Apple 2 floppy disk repair/analyzer?

[bloomer_au <bloomer@iprimus.com.au>]

Yeah. First thing to realise is that as soon as a disk dirties the
heads, the heads aren't reading properly anymore, so any output from
analyzer programs is no longer reliable. Analyzers aren't much use
generally in these times, especially if it's some old disk that has
ever worked in the past. The problem 99% of the time is -

1. disk is dirty -
2. dirty disk is placed in drive, heads become dirty -
3. drive can no longer read and may transfer dirt to other disks
placed in it

I found nearly every 5.25 of mine, having not been used for a decade+,
would do this to the drive. But by manually cleaning the 5.25 inch
disks before putting them in, I found I got 100% data recovery rate,
even with 20 year old stuff, and that the drive never got dirtied
again. So cleaning any old suspect disk before I put it in the drive
again has become my defacto position. The disks are easy to clean and
obviously very tough if they can retain the data for all that time and
survive all this cleaning to still run fine. It's way easier to clean
disks than it is to ever have to open up your drive. If you do dirty
your drive head, you can probably clear it if you run one of those
cleaning disks in there with isopropyl immediately. But if you dirty
the drive, leave it for some time (maybe even a decade...) then come
back, probably the only way to have a chance of cleaning the heads now
is by Mike's 'take it all apart' method. And you probably would rather
avoid that :)

My process became -

1. Manually inspect the disk you haven't used for a long time. You can
revolve it and look through the window at its underside, where the
data is. If you see even one speck of visible grime on it while
revolving it 360 degrees, it's best to clean it before you risk your
drive again. I would also clean it if there's grime on the side where
the data ISN'T, cos often it's mouldy type stuff that spreads or can
break off.

2. Cut the top off the disk jacket with scissors, being very careful
not to cut the disc itself.

3. Remove the floppy disc, not touching the surface with your fingers.
Use only the inner and outer ring edges for handling.

4. Place it on something nice like a microfibre cloth. Use drops of
isopropyl alcohol and a microfibre cloth to manually scrub off all
visible grime on both sides of the floppy. 'Scrub' sounds like a
strong word, and you feel afraid the first time you do it, but after
doing this to 25 floppies and recovering them all, I'm confident about
its safety. Just keep polishing carefully with cloths until the disc
is totally clear on both sides.

5. Cut the top off the jacket of an unused, blank and clean floppy you
don't need. Remove its floppy, and replace it with your newly cleaned
one. This is to avoid recontaminating it by putting it back into the
old, probably dirty, jacket.

6. Don't worry that the top of the jacket's gone, the drive doesn't
care, and unless you're overzealous or careless while handling the
open-ended jacket+floppy, the floppy's not gonna fall out.

7. Right, you've now got your old disc, cleaned, in a cleaned new 5.25
jacket, albeit with an open end.

8. Before you put this back in the drive, CLEAN THE HEADS with
isopropyl if you didn't back when the drive recently started failing
to read, then wait for the alcohol to dry completely.

9. Now you can proceed to using or copying your old disc, which if
you're lucky, I would expect to be running fine again.