ssubrama@weber.ucsd.edu (Shankar Subramanian) (10/02/90)
I'm stuck with a hundred DSDD unbranded 5.25 inch floppies that I bought two years ago. Now a week or so after I format them and put data on them the files disappear and the floppies appear unformatted. At this stage, the error message 'track 0 unusable or bad" often appears when one tries to reformat them, but positioning the hole in the floppy correctly and then formatting them works, but only for about a week after which the floppies are again useless. I'm curious why this should be happening and would like to know how to avoid this problem in the future. thanks shankar subramanian dept of economics uc san diego. ssubrama@weber.ucsd.edu
ESR@SLACVM.BITNET (Ed Russell) (10/03/90)
>I'm stuck with a hundred DSDD unbranded 5.25 inch floppies that I bought two >years ago. Now a week or so after I format them and put data on >them the files disappear and the floppies appear unformatted. At >this stage, the error message 'track 0 unusable or bad" often >appears when one tries to reformat them, but positioning the hole in the >floppy correctly and then formatting them works, but only for about >a week after which the floppies are again useless. I'm curious why >this should be happening and would like to know how to avoid this problem >in the future. You didn't say what kind of disk drive you are using. Is it 1.2M (AT)? If so, format of DD disks is notoriously unreliable. If not, you might try PCTOOLS DiskFix which has a "revitalize floppy" function to see if that helps.
browns@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com (Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems) (10/05/90)
In article <3801@network.ucsd.edu>, ssubrama@weber.ucsd.edu (Shankar Subramanian) writes: > I'm stuck with a hundred DSDD unbranded 5.25 inch floppies that I bought two > years ago. Now a week or so after I format them and put data on > them the files disappear and the floppies appear unformatted. At > this stage, the error message 'track 0 unusable or bad" often > appears when one tries to reformat them, [...] Have you cleaned the heads of your disk drive recently? Head cleaning kits are about $10 as I recall, and last a long long time. If you're lucky, that's the whole problem. How old is your disk drive? My A: drive went after about two years. It would have cost about $70 to realign the heads and it cosst $90 to buy a new one. Guess which I did. Does this problem happen with a good brand of diskette? If not, maybe the oxide is coming off your cheapo floppies. (I've never heard of such a thing, but who knows?) The above is my own opinion and not attributable to any other person or organization. email: browns@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A. (216) 371-0043