 How do i clean a floppy drive?, Cleaning floppy drive |
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 May 11 2005, 01:02 AM
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Member  Group: Members Posts: 15 Joined: 5-May 05 Member No.: 19,111  |
I've a friend who lost some imperative data (her dissertation) on her floppy drive (dated i know). Apparently when writing, there was dirt on the writer? This meant that it didn't copy. My question is - how can she clean the floppy drive? I'm not aware of floppy drive cleaners? Any suggestions gratefully received. Jazzymazzy 
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 May 11 2005, 02:56 AM
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Forum Regular Group: Members Posts: 345 Joined: 18-March 05 From: Jacksonville, Florida Member No.: 14,772 |
Dear jazzy,
If there was floppy drive cleaner, which could be made, it would be more expensive than a new floppy drive. Hell, you can get a used drive from a computer dealer for $5 USD or a new one online for about $8 USD. Companies or individuals would make nothing trying to clean a dying technology. Sorry for the bad news  ,junkdk 
-------------------- Your Hardware Guide.
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May 11 2005, 06:07 AM
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 Forum Addict Group: Members Posts: 2,159 Joined: 18-March 05 From: near Sydney, Australia Member No.: 14,809 |
Hi jazzymazzy,
There are (or were a couple of years ago) such things as floppy drive cleaners. Try Tandy or Radio shack. The cleaners look like a floppy disk with a white material where the floppy cover usually is, and they come with a vial of cleaning fluid. Sometimes they can do a good job removing built up oxide from a floppy drive's heads, but they are not so good at cleaning out built up dust and fluff which may be clogging the mechanism. A can of compressed air would help with that. Having said that, it would be much cheaper to buy a new floppy drive (as junkdk suggested) and throw the old one in the bin. I guess it depends how comfortable you are opening the case of your PC and fiddling around with the screws and cables. -------------------- Soltek QBIC, Pentium 4 3.0GHz, 512MB RAM, 200GB SATA HDD, ATI Radeon 9600XT 256MB, Netgear 54Mb/s WAP, ridiculously expensive Satellite Broadband Windows XP Home SP2, Trend Micro Internet Security, Firefox, Thunderbird, AdAwareSE, Spybot S&D, SpywareBlaster, A-squared Free, Ewido Security Suite. |
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May 11 2005, 07:34 AM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 15 Joined: 5-May 05 Member No.: 19,111 |
Thanks for the advice - i'll pass it on.
This post can be closed, but i'm not sure how to do that... Ciao, Jazzy. |
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May 11 2005, 10:51 AM
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 Forum Addict Group: BC Advisor Posts: 1,592 Joined: 3-September 04 From: S.E. Idaho, USA Member No.: 2,427 |
I keep one of those floppy cleaner disks in my desk drawer. But with floppies as low as five or six bucks, it certainly wouldn't hurt to swap one out when they get dirty. I've also found that floppies seem to fail every so often. Good idea to alternate any backups to two or more floppies.
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May 11 2005, 08:34 PM
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 01001010 01000011 Group: BC Advisor Posts: 1,887 Joined: 1-January 05 From: Ontario, Canada Member No.: 8,339 |
A few years back, we used to get a dry cleaning disk with a box of diskettes. I have also used the wet disk cleaner - 2 drops of a solution, put the disk in the drive, and it cleans the drive back to new(or gets it working again).
I prefer USB keys for portable data now. Holds more information and lasts a lot longer. I also use them to install software. Joshuacat -------------------- JC
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