dead floppy drive?

[lordsmurf]

Is it just me, or do 3¼ floppy drives die fast?

I may use a floppy disk twice a year at most, and it seems every third time or so, the drive is dead and I have to replace it. It powers up, it pretends to write to discs, but all it does is kill the disk (if "written" to) and will not read anything.

Yeah, the drive is dirty. Filthy, actually. Had all sorts of dust in it. I can only guess that build-up is what murders it.

$15-20 every few years .... it's like $5-10 per use. What a piece of crap format.

I wish they'd get firmware and BIOS upgrade to work native out of Windows, or at very least, bootable off CD-ROM or DVD-ROM.

Anybody able to relate to this?

[Snakebyte1]

I've had great luck with floppy drives, in fact the original floppy drive that came with my 486 is still working fine.

However, I do find that the newer floppy diskettes seem to be crap. I have old diskettes going back years that are still good. But, the newer diskettes bought in the last two years or so, all of a sudden they crap out, can't write to then or format them at all. I use floppies at work quite a bit and see the same sudden death syndrom in diskettes. Although I've only come across 2 dead floppy drives in 5 years.

[bevills1]

I've had only 1 floppy drive failure in about 20 years, and I've used mainly Mitsumi and just 1 Samsung floppy drive on about half dozen different systems. You can also create bootable CD in Nero which nearly eliminates need for floppy use. Recently I created a bootable Ghost 2003 CD because some systems I work on have no floppy drive. NewEgg has Mitsumi and Samsung floppy drives for under $10 if you really need a good floppy drive.

[budz]

computergeeks.com has mitsumi floppy drive $6.99 light grey.
i've had my share of dying floppy drives as well so i bought a external one but yet some mobos bios don't have the ability to boot via external floppy.

[SingSing]

My old 1.44MB floppy drive still works, but I bought a USB floopy drive for long term. Because I think they eventually will remove the floppy drive interface.

[INFRATOM]

Why are you using floppies? new computers even don't have it. USB flash drive is the thing to use. I myself never had any die but the floppies themselves 4 or 5 out of ten is either bad or go bad. They are magnetic being close to any source will corrupt them. and what can you put on 1 or so meg. You can boot from cd or create one to boot from cd.

[ROF]

I can relate to this. I usually buy them in packs of 3 or 5 from acortech.com

If someone needs one I can install one cheaply or if I need a replacement my cost is under $10. In my opinion the drives are not made the way they were when they actually were more useful. Of course, that might also be part of the problem. Like a good ol' car that runs reliably when you let it sit for a year with no use when you insert the ignition key you better say a little prayer that it turns over.

[JerryB]

Is it just me, or do 3¼ floppy drives die fast?

I may use a floppy disk twice a year at most, and it seems every third time or so, the drive is dead and I have to replace it. It powers up, it pretends to write to discs, but all it does is kill the disk (if "written" to) and will not read anything.

Yeah, the drive is dirty. Filthy, actually. Had all sorts of dust in it. I can only guess that build-up is what murders it.

$15-20 every few years .... it's like $5-10 per use. What a piece of crap format.

I wish they'd get firmware and BIOS upgrade to work native out of Windows, or at very least, bootable off CD-ROM or DVD-ROM.

Anybody able to relate to this?

Hi,
First of all shouldn't have that problem.... floppies drives are generally extremely reliable and cost effective and rugged... and faster... just wish they had more storage.. but any way....

I think your main problems is just dirt..... the 2 things I would do...
1. reconnect the the drive.... this insures that you have a good connection and it cleans the connectors.... at the same time...
2. get yourself a can of compressed air..... and really blow out all that dust that been going thru there..... they can collect on the read and write heads and the can gum up the spinner keeping it from comminup to optimum speed....
3. use a diskette head cleaner..... I wouldn't expect this to be a issue with usage amount... but.... if enugh dust accumulates on the read and write head it can prevent proper reading....

[ROF]

I'd recommend against using compressed air inside the floppy drive. For one the read/write head is towards the backend of the drive which is where all the dust will be pushed to and also the compressed air will leave residue inside the drive making dust easier to get stuck to those surfaces.

[TBoneit]

A decent brand of Blow Out will not leave a residue IMHO of course. Dells seem to be the worst for collecting dust.

As for floppy drives being weak? If you only ned it once in a blue moon, Don't leave it connected and installed. put it in a plastic bag to keep it clean and recoonect only when needed.

FWIW My floppy drives still work fine at home and work no problems. I even keep a 1.2 Mb 5.25" floppy installed here at work as every now and then I make money reading the customers old disks onto a CD. How is the 1.2Mb 5.25" floppy drive? Pretty old goota be early 90's at the latest.

For those saying why 1.2Mb floppys, we actually sold 3 of the 10disk boxes in the last 6 months. We see lots of old legacy equipment in business where they control expensive machinary and can not get s/w to run under better than DOS/Win3.x or if they can as a specialty it is very expensive so we do their repairs.

[ROF]

WOW! I thought I was the only one left with working 5.25 inch floppies. I haven't found a modern use for them but I still have info from the 80's intact on them and still use them for nostalgia purposes.

[TBoneit]

Nope at least 2 here and another home, Still have the old 720K drives and disks (3.5") too.

Modern use... Only to copy to CD or 1.44s for customers

Not to mention that modern floppy cables don't even have the connector for 5.25" drives anymore.

[redwudz]

I quit installing floppy drives in computers a couple of years ago. I do keep a USB floppy that has saved my butt a few times when I really needed floppy access. If they would make the BIOS upgrades 'live upgrades' or be able to run them from a thumb drive, that would cure that problem. I use a Windows PE CD disk instead of the W98 bootdisk now if I have to wipe the boot drive, so I am pretty much 'floppy free'.

I think the last floppy drive I bought was about $6US. Still have a few spares, just in case.

[waheed]

I still have my floppy drive from several yaers back and still working fine to this day. I only use it for boot purposes like going into FDISK when my PC boots up, or formatiing a hard drive. Other than that, I dont have any use for them anymore.

[RLT69]

Why are you using floppies? new computers even don't have it. USB flash drive is the thing to use. I myself never had any die but the floppies themselves 4 or 5 out of ten is either bad or go bad. They are magnetic being close to any source will corrupt them. and what can you put on 1 or so meg. You can boot from cd or create one to boot from cd.

Here's a question, can you F6 a CD or USB flash drive?

That's why some systems need floppies. This comes in handy especially when you are installing XP on a SATA hard drive - even SP2 still does not support SATA drives during install! You'll have to F6 and then stick in your trusty floppy.

Just because you can't think of a reason to use a floppy these days doesn't mean there isn't one.

:P

p.s. floppy still going strong - going on 4 years old.