Mac Plus Disk Drive Issue

[nogardvfx]

Hope somebody knows the answer to this.  Googling is not really helping me narrow the issue down.  

There are two issues happening.  The first is that when a disk is ejected, about half the time the time the drive *thinks* the disk is not ejected and gives it a few more tries.  Even though the disk has ejected perfectly fine.  The second, is that I can read floppies perfect with the drive.  I just cannot seem to format any.  I have even tried reformatting disks that the drive has read data from.  Every time I format a disk it goes through the entire process and then just at the very end it says "Initialization Failed".  I have tried a number of disks, but no luck.

I appreciate any advice anybody can give me.  Cheers!

 

[just.in.time]

Has the drive mechanics been cleaned and re-greased? That’s usually a pretty good starting point for drive issues. The wiki on this site has the instructions. When you have the drive apart, a q-tip with rubbing alcohol to clean the drive heads should suffice. Just be very careful to not pull the heads too far apart. If you do they will come out of alignment and that is no good.

 

[Johnnya101]

Yeah, do what above says. I have a Power Mac that had really weird issues. Some times the disk would read, sometimes wouldn't initialize, weird random things. Took it apart. Peice of cardstock right across the heads!

 

[nogardvfx]

Yeah I did that last weekend.  Did not take the drive totally apart, but compressed air to clean out the dust bunnies and alcohol to clean the heads.  Guess I will try digging a bit deeper.  Thanks for the help.

 

[nogardvfx]

Thanks for the help guys.  I went through whole process in the wiki and put in my first disk at it worked.  The disk I picked was at random and one I have never tried formatting it.  Formatted perfectly.  Decided to go back and try some of the other disks and they did the same thing as before.  Failed to intitialize.  I am starting to think I just have a group of diskettes that went bad.  I have bunch of blanks in storage and grabbed a handful of those.  Most worked fine w/ a few bad apples.  End of the day I think it is all working fine, and maybe re-lubricating the drive wasn't the culprit.  But it certainly did not hurt.

Cheers and thanks for all the help.

 

[Johnnya101]

The drive heads could have "infected" the disks if it had dirty heads, or as you say, they are just bad.