[Coco] Floppies and floppy drives

[Steve Ostrom]

-----Original Message----- 
From: Dennis Bathory-Kitsz
Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2013 11:17 AM
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [Coco] Floppies and floppy drives

At 12:08 PM 4/24/2013, you wrote:
>On 04/21/2013 06:11 PM, Aldo Lagana wrote:
>>So I wonder is it the media itself that is gumming the drive?  Or is it 
>>filth and 30 years of time?
>
>I recently dug out some old floppies for the purpose of backing them up to 
>Drivewire image files.  One of them had sectors that wouldn't read.

Many forms of magnetic media from the 1980s are susceptible to
gumminess. If you can confirm they are gummy, the media can indeed be
recovered.
...
Recover the data immediately. The gumminess will return within about 2 
weeks.

Dennis


I've done a lot of archiving on my Coco 3 disk system.  The main problem 
I've seen is not gumminess of the disks, but a type of oxidized scale that 
makes the disks sound like sandpaper in the drive.  This sound happens often 
when I first clamp the disk in the drive as the drive turns for about 1 
second.  These scales are visible if you examine the disk surface in good 
light.  I have found nothing that helps these disks, and they foul the drive 
heads immediately, requiring a good cleaning of the drive heads.  I wish 
there was some way to "wash" these disks with a solvent that removed the 
oxidation, but would not harm the original surface.  Maybe I'll try a few 
experiments this summer to see if some diluted antioxidant mist might work, 
at lease temporarily.

--- Steve ---