smithc@thor.acc.stolaf.edu (Christopher A. Smith) (01/23/91)
I've been encountering a very frustrating problem on my Mac SE recently, and I can't quite figure out what is causing it. In the past couple of days I've come across about ten disks that have something like bad sectors on them. I did try to reformat them, since I needed the blank disks and the files were of no use to me anymore, but after several attempts at each the computer rejected each disk, saying "Initialization failed!" In the past year or so I've lost about 20 to 30 disks to this menace. To me that doesn't seem quite right since no one else I know with a Mac has had the same problem. What exactly would be responsible for so many floppies being destroyed? Could it be a drive (two, actually) that are out of alignment (that was a common problem on older computers, so I'm told), or could I have been rather unfortunate to come across a batch of bad disks with corrupted media? Any suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated! Please respond via Internet, and if anyone is interested I'll put up a summary of the responses. Thanks, Christopher A. Smith St. Olaf College INTERNET: smithc@thor.acc.stolaf.edu
Randy.Shaw@p1.f555.n161.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Randy Shaw) (01/28/91)
> From: smithc@thor.acc.stolaf.edu (Christopher A. Smith) > Date: 23 Jan 91 02:04:16 GMT > Organization: St. Olaf College; Northfield, MN > Message-ID: <1991Jan23.020416.28411@acc.stolaf.edu> > Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware > > I've been encountering a very frustrating problem on my Mac SE > recently, and I can't quite figure out what is causing it. In the > past couple of days I've come across about ten disks that have > something like bad sectors on them. I did try to reformat them, > since I needed the blank disks and the files were of no use to me > anymore, but after several attempts at each the computer rejected > each disk, saying "Initialization failed!" In the past year or so > I've lost about 20 to 30 disks to this menace. > > What exactly would be responsible for so many floppies being > destroyed? In the case of my SE, it was simply that the drive needed cleaning, and lubrication at some strategic points. I do not neccessarily recommend you do the work yourself. But, I was having the identical problem to you, and it finally got so bad that I would get a 70% failure rate when initializing new disks. Now, my drive works flawlessly every time in the 4 months since I worked on the drive. -- Randy Shaw - via FidoNet node 1:125/777 UUCP: ...!uunet!hoptoad!fidogate!161!555.1!Randy.Shaw INTERNET: Randy.Shaw@p1.f555.n161.z1.FIDONET.ORG