My SE's floppy drive isn't working properly at all

[spaceinvader12]

So, I booted up the SE today to copy some games onto it from a powerbook. It was working alright for a bit but when I stuck in a reformatted IBM floppy then I got an error saying the disk is damaged and it wants me to initialize it. It does this for all HFS disks I insert now when just an hour ago it was working fine. My USB floppy drive reads the HFS disks correctly in Linux, so it's probably not the disks fault.

I tried initializing a disk but it eventually failed with the error message "Failed to initialize". Did I stick a bad floppy in and that messed up the drive? Or could it possibly be alignment? It won't boot from floppy although the heads move and try to read the disks. What should I start doing for troubleshooting? I can't afford to replace the drive and I'm hoping it's not too serious of an issue, so repairs would be best.

 

[Themk]

Have you ever cleaned and lubricated the drive? If not, do that first. Dirty heads can cause LOTS of problems.

 

[BadGoldEagle]

Happened to me a lot. Just clean the heads thoroughly with isopropyl alcohol and you should be good.

 

[spaceinvader12]

I had time to take it apart and follow the 68kmla guide on disassembly and cleaning. Didn't have white lithium grease so I went with regular, and I also cleaned the heads. A bit of junk came off of those (using 91% alcohol and q-tips) and once reassembled it seems to be happy again, reading and booting from disks.

I think I have traced down the culprit as well. Old, improperly stored disks. I recently got a few floppy disks from a friend that were behaving a bit strangely in my USB drive and one of them wasn't working at all, and it dirtied up the heads on the SE when I unintentionally tried to format it meaning to grab another disk of the same color. I'm guessing this is what stopped it from reading disks, but cleaning and lubricating it certainly didn't hurt. Thanks, guys!

 

[Themk]

It could also be just from age, not a specific disk.

After 25 years of use, there is wear on the heads, 1000s of disks have probably been used. They just get dirty. I wouldn't blame it on any specific disk, but, one disk may have been the proverbial "straw that broke the camels back".