All of a sudden today, my 3.5" floppy drive has decided it doesn't
want to work right.  I can still read disks, but when I try to format
a disk, I get the message, "Track 0 unusable" and it refuses to go any
farther.  I unfortunately found this out several disks into a backup
with PCBACKUP (which uses track 0, I think).

Have any of you had this problem?  Can this be fixed with a
realinment, or do I need to buy anew drive?

71 responses total.

As the old lady on Saturday Night Live would say, "Never mind."

In the mail today, I received a computer supplies catalog.  On the
back page, they were hyping a sale on head cleaning kits.  Ah ha!  I
rushed over to Target (because they are having a sale on floppies),
bought a cleaning kit (it was on sale, too!), and now everything is
right with my drive again.

Everything uses track 0 - that's where the FAT is, if I recall.

Must have gotten a salami sandwich in there or something.

A cotton swab dipped into alcahol will also do the trick, thought it's a
bit tricky working through the front door.  You'll also need a flashlight
to locate the two heads.

        Don't overuse the head cleaning kit.  They usually dislodge a lot of
crud, which then falls onto the disk and grinds into the head.  I wouldn't
use it more than every few months.

Hmm -- that sounds rather unlikely to me.  I assume these cleaning kits
consist of some sort of floppy that you impregnate with cleaning fluid &
insert into the drive?  If it's anything like that, then what John says
just can't happen -- the cleaning thing will only clean the heads, and
if it's doing its job, all the dirt will not only be dislodged from the
head, but will end up on the cleaning disk that's removed from the
drive.  If it leaves *anything* behind that it dislodged, it's not doing
its job.  The head is actually a very simple mechanical object -- most
probably a small broken loop of magnetic material embedded in a tiny
bead of ceramic and a larger bead of plastic, polished to present a flat
surface to the diskette with no crevices to collect dirt.  (The only
other bit to the head proper is a winding of copper wire around the loop
of magnetic material, probably buried in the plastic where you can't see
it.)  The only real concern in cleaning this would be the possiblity
that the cleaning process might involve abrasives, which could with
sufficient use wear the heads.  Assuming proper technology, this
shouldn't be a real problem; after all, the head already has to be hard
enough to resist the iron oxide coating on a typical floppy.  (A more
interesting concern might be the possibility that an ordinary floppy
might, given sufficient use, grind into the head.  Or lots of the same
kind of substandard floppy rather -- the floppy is certain to wear out
before the head.)

Of course you shouldn't take my word for it -- check out the directions
given with the cleaning kit, & buy the kit only from reputable firms.
Chances are unlikely they'll risk telling you to do anything that might
result in any sort of lawsuit against them.

Perhaps the simplest reason not to clean the heads every day is cost.  A
use of any of those kits is not likely to be cheap.

The head cleaning kit I bought for my VCR (arguably, a much more
delicate mechanism), claims it was tested on a VCR for 50 years worth of
weely cleanings (2500 total) and that the VCR continued to perform like
new.  Since each cleaning costs 28 cents, that means $700 worth of
cleaning didn't harm the VCR.

The cleaning kit I bought was manufactured by 3M.  From its
construction, it does seem that whatever crud it does get off the
heads would be trapped by the cleaning disk.  I plan to use it only
when the drive starts acting up.

It takes an amazingly small amount of crud to screw up a drive.

Especially high-density drives.  This is the first computer I've owned
with high-density drives and the first time I've ever had to clean
heads.  My old computer is over 5 years old now, and I never had a
problem with the floppies.

        re #5, I admit, I've never used a head cleaning disk.  But I've heard
a lot of bad things about them from people much more knowledgeable about
hardware than I.
        Drive head cleaning kits don't usually have a cleaning solution.
They're usually just a disk.  I presume they have some kind of brush
inside them.
        It may be just plain prejudice on my part, of course, but I'd never
use one myself.  I'd rather take a Q-tip and some alcohol to my drive; if
I do that I know I'm getting the crud out, instead of recirculating it.
(It's cheaper, too.)

For floppy drives, yup, the Q-tip is certainly best.  Although that
may be changing as the 3.5" drives don't seem to have heads nearly
as accessible.

   The cleaning kit I purchased came with a bottle of cleaning fluid
(which appears to be mostly alcohol) and a thing that looks like a
disk with a pad in it.  The pad does not appear to be any more
abrasive than a Q-tip is, and I don't think it would cause any more
damage than a Q-tip.

They list an 800 number on the box for more information:
800-222-1150.

The best thing for unrealiable drives is usually re-alignment.
I used to do that at computer medic when things slowed down.
We would swap out bas drives for new ones, and then try to realign
the bad ones when we had the time.  I could generally reclaim about half
of them that way.  The rest had alignment problems that I didn't have tools
to deal with, or had mechanical problems (many drives have particular 
design flaws... the apple mac eject mechanism on older mac drives, the
'vibration dampers' on several brands of mirco 3.5" drives that fall off the
head mechanism into the drive...)

I you are handy with a screwdriver and confident of your skills, It's no
big deal to remove the offending dirty drive, pop the top, and go at the
heads with a Q-tip.  It's also a good time to clean dust out with a soft
modelers paint brush.  (You should do your head cleaning last and blow out
any loose dust after the brush cleaning.  Be careful of your air soucre.
60 psi can bend and scatter drive parts FAST. Try the blowing end of a 
canister vacuum from about a foot or two away.)

  Those who are inspired to try doing this themselves should just remember
that we're talking about *floppy* drives.  Dire things can (and will) happen
if you try to open your hard drive.

  It seems unlikely that anyone would make that mistake but the consequences
are such that it's worth mentioning anyways..

I hadn't thought of that but it's a good point.

Well, they're not that dire.  Snakes won't leap out of the hard drive
or anything.  It just won't work for very long afterwards, unless you
happen to have convenient access to a *very* clean room.  It's also
pretty pointless -- if your hard disk stopped working because the
heads got dirty there is probably something very wrong with the drive
that can't be fixed by cleaning with a q-tip.  It would be good to
back up your data *before* trying this exercise, given the odds
against the drive's long-term survival.

  Snakes *might* leap out of a hard drive.  Chances are if there *were*
snakes in a hard drive it wouldn't work and you'd be more tempted to open
it.  That might be just the chance they're waiting for..

Ok, if I ever buy a hard disk from you and it turns out to be D.O.A., I
won't open it.

It'd be just like Mike to pack it with sping-loaded snakes on you, Marcus.

 Wouldn't do you much good to open it if it arrived D.O.A. anyways, since
if it wasn't dead before then it certainly would be afterwards.  But I wouldn't
worry about it too much considering how extremely unlikely it is that I'll ever
sell you a hard disk.

What, why won't you sell one to Marcus? Got something against him?
Would you sell one to me?

KIDS! DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME - THESE ARE ***TRAINED*** PROFESSIONALS!!!

 re #21:  Because I only have one, I need it, and it's unlikely that anyone
else would want it anyways.  However, I'll be glad to sell one to you as soon
as I can figure out how to keep the snakes alive in the mail for several days.

I shall be very upset if anybody mails me a disk drive containing dead
snakes.

Uh...damn...don't sign for it.

Well, if you get a worm virus on your hard drive, that'll keep them fed
for a few days.....

I specialize in old obselete hardware.  Come to think of it, though,
I may have a PET virus sitting on some floppies in the basement.

maybe it's just worms.

It isn't worms -- you need a practical network for that.

Still, give your PET some worm pills and maybe it'll save you some vet bills.

Re 26:  Good one!  Now if these lesser punocrats would let it die....

Well, it's interesting that this item is still here.  Almost a year and
a half later, it looks like this drive has decided to give up the ghost.
Even cleaning the heads didn't work this time.  Ah well, the price of these
babies is now down to $50(!), so I guess it's time to buy a new one.

Was it the same message this time? I've been lucky, and a cleaning disk
has always removed whatever was offensive to Track 0, Disk error, etc
(view crossed digits...).

Unfortunately, no.  This time, the drive just gives read errors.  It
may not be the drive, but all of a sudden two floppies have "gone bad"
which makes me suspicious of the drive.

Just might outta think of something common to both drives, like
maybe the controller card?  Having two coomplicated devices
head south for the winter is good for humans, but tends to
implicate something common to both, not the coincidence of
both of them basking in the Bahamas.

I meant two floppy disks, not two drives.  My 5-1/4" drive seems fine.

Were those two floppies formatted/written on the same "other" machine,
or on the drive in question? I've heard of slight mismatches making
disks formatted on one machine unreadable on another, although other
combinations work (I have been lucky enough to not have experienced this!).

Some disks are marginal also, especially the no name cheap ones.

floppies formatted on " a different machine," dependingon the machine,
can cause some phenominally *stupid* problems. For what it's worth
I've always advised carrying disks formatted ONLY on *your* machine's
floppy. That is a desirable goal, but not always possible, I realize.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss