Two old tricks from a geezer

[Chris Crawford]

I did a quick search of the forum and couldn't find any reference to this trick, so I'll explain it here. There's a methods that SOMETIMES succeeds in pulling data off of an otherwise lost diskette. You snugly wrap the diskette in saran wrap or put it in a sealable plastic bag, carefully removing ALL the air from it before sealing. Then you put it in your freezer and wait for a couple of hours to get it cold. With everything else ready, you pop it out of the freezer and its bag and pop it into the disk drive. You have literally only a minute or two to pull this off. You attempt to load as much as you can. If it doesn't work, you can try one more time, but if it doesn't work after two tries, it's dead, Jim. 

 

I have successfully recovered several diskettes this way. I warn you, though, that it could wreak damage if water condenses onto the surface of the diskette. The physics is simple: the strength of a magnetic field generated by magnetized material is weakened by the thermal motions of the atoms. If you cool it down a bit, you make the magnetic fields in the floppy disk a little stronger. The effect isn't much: you're reducing the absolute temperature of the floppy material by maybe 5%. But it has worked for me -- many years ago.

 

It might be fun experimenting with dry ice; that would get it much, much colder. Of course, at such low temperatures the plastic base of the diskette probably gets too hard to properly form the microscopic bubble that makes floppy disks work. It might even break. Do this only with a diskette that you're willing to destroy.

 

By the way, never, EVER put a floppy disk near any sharp edged ferrous object. Scissors are usually the culprits here. The magnetic field gradient is highest at the edges of the scissors.

 

The other trick you probably already know: use an eraser to clean the contacts of any board that you're going to stick into a computer. It helps. 

[+bhall408]

I managed to get soda on a source code floppy for a project I was working on in the 80s.

 

By the time I had noticed (the next day), the soda had dried a bit and turned into sticky goo.

 

My cunning trick - I slit open the floppy, pulled the disk out, cleaned it with rubbing alcohol, and popped it into a clean sleeve from a 2nd sacrificial floppy. Was able to then copy the disk and sigh with relief!

 

 

[rdefabri]

What is the life expectancy of a 5 1/4" floppy from the haclyon days?  I have tons sitting in room temp storage, I'm curious how much time may have impacted them...

[TGB1718]

1 hour ago, rdefabri said:

What is the life expectancy of a 5 1/4" floppy from the haclyon days?  I have tons sitting in room temp storage, I'm curious how much time may have impacted them...

It really depends on the quality, I have loads of disks from the early days, about 50% are beyond help, the better

brands seemed to have faired much better than unbranded.

Unfortunately, there was a time when they were stored in a damp garage, if not for that, I'm sure many more would have survived.

[+Stephen]

3 hours ago, rdefabri said:

What is the life expectancy of a 5 1/4" floppy from the haclyon days?  I have tons sitting in room temp storage, I'm curious how much time may have impacted them...

Hard to say, storage conditions greatly determine this.  My experience with various forms of magnetic media are:

1 - I would say that 95% of my original floppy collection (5.25") from 1984 through 1990 has fully survived, no read errors.  Multiple brands here, but the overwhelming majority were bulk white jacket single sided disks I punched to make double sided.

2 - All of my cassette tapes are 100% fine and usable.  The oldest are from 1970.

3 - I have recently begun collecting reel to reel tapes, the oldest being from 1962 and it is again, perfectly fine.

4 - I've still not ran across a single issue with any of my VHS tapes, again 1984 on up.  They have been digitally archived, but I trust the tapes more than the backups, so I have kept them all.

 

I have found 3.5" disks to be utterly garbage, every one I had I just threw away because so many had problems.  Same for any CDRs I recorded from the mid 90s on up.  After a few dozen became unreadable, I just trashed everyone I had.  No point to keeping them.

[rdefabri]

1 minute ago, Stephen said:

Hard to say, storage conditions greatly determine this.  My experience with various forms of magnetic media are:

1 - I would say that 95% of my original floppy collection (5.25") from 1984 through 1990 has fully survived, no read errors.  Multiple brands here, but the overwhelming majority were bulk white jacket single sided disks I punched to make double sided.

2 - All of my cassette tapes are 100% fine and usable.  The oldest are from 1970.

3 - I have recently begun collecting reel to reel tapes, the oldest being from 1962 and it is again, perfectly fine.

4 - I've still not ran across a single issue with any of my VHS tapes, again 1984 on up.  They have been digitally archived, but I trust the tapes more than the backups, so I have kept them all.

 

I have found 3.5" disks to be utterly garbage, every one I had I just threw away because so many had problems.  Same for any CDRs I recorded from the mid 90s on up.  After a few dozen became unreadable, I just trashed everyone I had.  No point to keeping them.

I've come across some of my old reel-to-reel tapes from the mid-70s, still sound great.  Some of my VHS tapes are fuzzy, but that may be more on the VHS deck than the cassettes.

 

My diskettes were all in enclosed cases, stored at room temp.  They haven't been touched in over since probably 1990.  The dawn of emulators has seen my Atari 400 on ice mostly since that time.  I know it powers up, but I haven't done anything with it otherwise.

 

At some point, I'd like to convert the disks over to .ATR or some other file for keeping.  Another one of those when I get a "round tuit".

[+Stephen]

Yeah - I converted all my floppies nearly 20 years ago (early adopter of APE - saving my collection was why I registered it).  I keep several working drives still though, in case I ever run across other archives and it's also fun to check out the ABBUC quarterly disks on real media.

[tep392]

I occasionally buy original 5.25" floppy software and I would say 95% of them are still fully readable.  The NOS games I have bought worked 100%.  I've purchased a bunch of blank NOS Athena disks produced back in the 90's and they all work very reliably.  It depends on how well they were stored, but it's really amazing how reliable these old floppy's can be.

[kogden]

On 8/11/2022 at 10:03 AM, tep392 said:

I occasionally buy original 5.25" floppy software and I would say 95% of them are still fully readable.  The NOS games I have bought worked 100%.  I've purchased a bunch of blank NOS Athena disks produced back in the 90's and they all work very reliably.  It depends on how well they were stored, but it's really amazing how reliable these old floppy's can be.

I have found that the disks survive much better than the drives themselves.  Drives I *ALWAYS* have to clean, strip down and often replace a belt or two.  80s era power supply boards can be scary as hell too.  

 

I've actually had a FAR worse time trying to preserve ST software and craptastic ST 3.5" floppy drives.  Lack of SIO for peripheral emulation makes things tougher too.  Time for an UltraSatan I guess.

[TGB1718]

4 minutes ago, kogden said:

I've actually had a FAR worse time trying to preserve ST software and craptastic ST 3.5" floppy drives. 

Very true, I've had so many troubles with floppy drives that just seem to stop working even without use

as they get older, managed to get 2 of them to work (3 1/2) but my 5 14" drives just refuse to Format/Read?Write.

 

Also 3 1/2" floppy's are really bad, I've probably had about a 90% failure rate with them.

 

Much better survival rate with my older 8 Bit floppy disks and fingers crossed, other than a track 0 sensor and head cleaning

both my 1050's are still working fine (now I've gone and done it  )