Floppy Disk Drive

edited August 2004 in Hardware
I was recently writting MS-DOS 6 floppies from images when I took out the disk to put in disk two and got an error.

I tried formating the disk and it fails.

I tried other disks and none of them read or write in any OS (Windows, DOS, or Linux).

I tried booting to a Windows 98 startup disk and it could not be read.

I checked the connections to the drive and they were fine. Any ideas?

Comments

  • Yes....

    If it just stops working

    Its just.....broken

    Try another drive
  • If the drive worked before, it's probably the disk

    Try unconditional formatting (FORMAT A: /U)

    -Q
  • But he tried other disks
  • The error message:

    'Invaild Media or Track 0 Bad'
  • sounds like a bad floppy disk

    Could be the heads on the floppy drive though
  • sounds like a bad floppy disk

    Could be the heads on the floppy drive though

    The disk works on another machine.

    What can I do about the heads on the floppy drive?
  • Its a floppy, its unreilable.

    the heads are probly bad, grab another $5 floppy drive and shove it in the machine.
  • I got a 5.25" drive that lasted me 23 years before it took a crap on me
  • I got my old dependable Compaq 3
  • I dont even know if mine works. I just pulled this floppy from a junk PC and shoved it in the Duron
  • TopherNET wrote:
    Its a floppy, its unreilable.

    the heads are probly bad, grab another $5 floppy drive and shove it in the machine.

    Its an old drive (dated 1994). I'm going to go down to the computer store soon.

    In the mean time I will use a floppy disk image in VMware to test K OS.
  • I fixed it.

    I carfully took a q-tip with some rubbing alchol and cleaned off the heads.
  • Thats what I thought

    You can also buy head cleaners like for floppy drives and CD/DVD drives as well
  • I've had floppy drives that have latest for years and years and others that only last a year. Try cleaning out the drive with a small brush and then try it. Also try switching out ribbon cables or setting the drive to B. If all fails then you have a bad drive.

    I had a 1.44MB floppy drive and out of the blue it stoped reading 1.44MB floppys and only worked with 720KB floppys. The BIOS was even set to 1.44MB and I even tryed 2.88MB. Floppy drives can be werid and troublsum at times.
  • I don't think I've ever had any Floppy disk drives crap out on me besides the 3.5inch one in the eMachine. I've had alotta CD-ROM drives crap on me though.
  • i dont need no floppy drive.... i got an external one for the laptop but i never used it...
  • I don't think I've ever had any Floppy disk drives crap out on me besides the 3.5inch one in the eMachine. I've had alotta CD-ROM drives crap on me though.

    the floppy drive in my pc hardly ever works, and ive only had 1 cd rom, acutally cdrw crap out on me but that probly had about 10 thousdand burns done with it. lasted me a looong time
  • all the floppy disks i got dont work. and my CDRW's still goin strong....
  • Everything can be... Try to format the floppy using pu_1700 driver.
  • Half of my computers only have HDs, I have no need for floppys anymore and I have two computers with CD-RW and one PC with a DVD+RW and I have them shared on the network. Also I have a HD copyer that can copy a HD in 5mins. I use it for copying a OS over or get a HD ready to install a OS over the lan.
  • I use floppies in all my machines.

    -Q
  • Floppys are so old and slow though...i really only use them for old machines. I'd use USB keys but their a waste of money. I'll get em when there the same price as floppy disks.
  • TCPMeta wrote:
    Half of my computers only have HDs, I have no need for floppys anymore and I have two computers with CD-RW and one PC with a DVD+RW and I have them shared on the network. Also I have a HD copyer that can copy a HD in 5mins. I use it for copying a OS over or get a HD ready to install a OS over the lan.


    Exactly. LAN and CD-X is far better than floppies, but the reason I ended up putting them in my systems is because for some reason, alot of the CDs I burn myself DONT turn out bootable, so I need to boot off floppies sometimes, or I want to use my 1337 bootdisk.
  • Floppys are so old and slow though...i really only use them for old machines. I'd use USB keys but their a waste of money. I'll get em when there the same price as floppy disks.
    they arent that expensive now. i bought a 256 meg one last night for 27$ :)
  • hacked711 wrote:
    Floppys are so old and slow though...i really only use them for old machines. I'd use USB keys but their a waste of money. I'll get em when there the same price as floppy disks.
    they arent that expensive now. i bought a 256 meg one last night for 27$ :)

    woah! good price, i could use that

    i got my 64mb usb key for that price 2 years ago.
  • office max. last christmas i got a 128 Mb memory stick for that same price just i filled it up in 10 min. im transfering to my new notebook (i won it in a bet with a friend of mine lol )
  • i got a 64MB one. smallest u can get easiyl now is like 128, i need a new one tho this one is too small...
  • Ive got a 16MB USB key thing that I NEVER USE.... Ive had it forever...
  • Can I get it?

    -Q
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