Is this 3.5" manual eject FDD recoverable?

[TimHD]

Hi

I have been fixing a Quadra 630CD I recently acquired from eBay and was having some issues with it's 3.5" internal manual eject FDD.

After a general clean up of the machine's innards including an air pressure clean of the FDD (without disassembling the FDD) I tried a few test formats with some 'new' floppies. It seems that the FDD couldn't generate 1.44mb (less a small amount for file system) sized formatted disks - as it seemed to be losing space (bad sectors?) during the verify pass after the format (some down to 1350kb, another 1422kb). More worryingly, it seemed to damage one of my disks if that's indeed a scratch on the magnetic media - see image below (am trying manual linking this time as the insert function did not seem to work for everyone last time).

Obviously, old 3.5" media can be iffy too (though again, this was a 'fresh' box of 10 1.44mb Verbatims) so I also tried a few of these disks on my SE/30 (recapped and with a restored/repaired auto inject FDHD floppy drive) and managed to get better outcomes - i.e. either a complete format of a new disk and even getting some of that 'lost' space back when re-formatting those Quadra formatted disks on the SE/30's FDHD. 

I did a few runs of a floppy head cleaner disk on my Quadra's drive and it seemed to get better results on a new disk, but was still losing a bit of space - 1422kb max - suggesting the drive's not up to scratch (pardon the pun).

Thoughts? Is the manual inject FDD recoverable or is it just going to do more damage over time and I  should toss it out and get a new refurb?

Image link below.

https://68kmla.org/forums/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_5459_108_1173136.jpg

 

[Macdrone]

IBM formatted disks do not have full space to disk.  1422 may be the max with the format, I thought it was 1442 but its been years.  I always hated the IBM formatted disks as they never ended up being reliable to copy disks with disk copy because of the space size.  I have floppy drives I could send a couple if you need them.  Im a little backlogged with parts and PMs but Ill do my best.

 

[TimHD]

Thanks, I vaguely recalled that issue of IBM formatted disks being lower quality/size than Mac disks - and these were IBM formatted disks (I ordered Mac, but they sent me IBM - getting a replacement box shortly). Given this may be media related (rather than hardware) will try again with some Mac format disks to test it out.

Frankly, given the age of some of the 3.5" media out there, it could be just the floppy disk, not the drive that's failing.

PS - Is there any way you can be sure you are sourcing 'current' 3.5" diskettes - indeed are any manufacturers still making them, or are all of them just leftover stock now? (the disks I got were Verbatim but the supplier had since told me the don't make them any more!)