Compromised floppy disks, source of malfunction unknown

[Apostrophe]

Hi,

I have one of my SE's on right now, and I decided to try running a few of my millions of floppy disks that I salvaged from our old house.

Most of the 800k disks that I have are unreadable by the SE, when they previously worked fine. Not only that, but when I select the option to initialize, I get the message Initialization Failed!

So I tried another batch of 800k's from the other side of my room, and BOOM! They work. Except for the last one in that batch, which exhibited the non-readable and non-initializable behavior.

Not only that, but my Centris 610 has had this problem with 800k's lately as well. Meaning I know that my floppy drives work fine. This '800k disease' seems to spread randomly throughout my room, affecting some floppies in a stack but not others. I haven't yet tested my 1.44 MB's.

I can't think of any magnetic source that could have done this. Any ideas?

Also, is there another way to initialize those disks that won't let me initialize?

EDIT: The SE successfully initialized one of the diseased disks, and then I waved it all around my room, set it on surfaces where other floppies sit, etc., then put it back into the SE. Reads it just fine.

Those floppies can't have all stopped working at once, can they?

Later today I'll turn on my Centris 610 to see if 1.44 MB's are affected.

Despite that one success, most of my DS/DD floppies can't be initialized, even when I move the small black square back and forth.

Thanks for any help,

-Apostrophe

 

[II2II]

Supposedly, floppy diskettes are susceptible to mold. If you are in a humid climate, that may damage the diskettes. I would imagine that this renders the diskette useless.

I haven't seen this is diskettes, but I have seen it in tapes: sometimes the binder that holds the magnetic media onto the plastic substraight fails. When this happens, the media is rendered useless.

 

[Scott Baret]

I have seen problems with floppies that were stored in my garage for a while. I think it may be a combination of moisture (I've got a vent from a bathroom in my basement that goes out there plus there's the water that evaporates from my car) and extreme cold in the winter.

Veterans may recall the temperature requirements on the sleeves of 5.25" floppies. A 3M DS/DD 5.25" floppy diskette sleeve states that a disk should be stored between 50 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit (10 and 60 degrees Celsius). I know for a fact that my garage can be less than 10 (or 50) degrees in the winter based on the readings of my car thermometer (which I have in Celsius; it has read as low as 6 degrees). I'd imagine the temperature requirements for 3.5" floppies would be the same since the material inside is identical.

I too was looking to format some 800K disks and found not one of the group of six I had pulled from my garage worked when I attempted to format them. Looking to see if it was a fluke I also tried a high density disk. That disk formatted yet it immediately had write errors. I then tried one of the failed 800K disks again and it formatted fine.

I should note that I formatted the working 800K disk in my SE, which runs System 6.0.7. The failures came in my LC, which runs System 7.1. I'm not sure if the system version had anything to do with it or not. The disk worked for what I needed it for (moving two MacWrite documents from one Mac to the other) without showing signs of error, yet I am not going to trust it as a longterm backup solution.

Try using System 6 to see if that makes a difference. I'll have to try it on one of the failed disks on the LC to see if it has something to do with my LC's floppy drive.

 

[dav7]

All I can say is this: copy protection notwithstanding, find a copy of DART or Disk Copy and back them up NOW. If some of them have disintegrated, this is a warning that they've reached the end of their life and they eventually all will.

-dav7

 

[Apostrophe]

No, I don't need to back them up. They contain useless files from my dad's office. He still works there, but all the files on those floppies are of course useless by now.

I simply have those floppies to use as storage when needed.

So I don't care that the data on them now is disintegrated, as long as I'll be able to wipe them clean and start over. Which doesn't seem to be happening...I hope that I'll find a way to initialize them...

Thanks,

-Apostrophe