smithc@thor.acc.stolaf.edu (Christopher A. Smithc) (01/25/91)
A few days ago I posted an article, pleading for help with a destructive FDHD SuperDrive, and the response was prompt and very helpful. I was asked to post a summary since this is not a localised problem, so here are the results, and they DO work: (1) Clean the drive. Radio Shack makes a cheap 3.5" drive cleaning kit; however, you need a program that can force the head of the disk drive to stay on the disk long enough for the cleaning to actually work. (3) Reformat the disk on an 800K drive and use it as such. Just because the disk can't be formatted as a high density disk doesn't mean the disk is completely useless. If worse comes to worse, the disks make great frisbess and coasters. (3) Get a copy of the "B.A.D." INIT from sumex-aim.stanford.edu. The pathname of the file is: /info-mac/init/bad-init-11.hqx. Use anonymous ftp to get the file. I did run BAD last night on a deceased high density disk. First the Finder rejected the floppy, saying "Initialization failed!" Then BAD kicked in and reformatted the disk, locking out bad sectors. The disk is now usable, but it is not recommended that you store any valuable information a disk that previously had bad sectors. Thanks for the help from everyone who responded! Christopher A. Smith St. Olaf College INTERNET: smithc@thor.acc.stolaf.edu