Is floppy disk cleaning worth the attempt?

[kenp]

The number of disks that I'll be trying to recover may be getting smaller.

 

A fair number of disks have become corrupted by something.  I found it when I put a disk in the drive and it made a sound something like a fine grain sandpaper.  There's a blotchy pattern that seems to be from the floppy disk liner.  Some sort of mildew or mould, perhaps.

Attached is a picture of one of the disks.  I opened one to see how bad this was an it's spread pretty well across the disk except where the holes for the heads.

 

Has anyone had any luck cleaning this sort of contamination from a floppy?

 

 

[_The Doctor__]

Yes we have and your going to try something insane to some if you want to follow us down the crazy Atari Archivist path...

 

don't run any disk like this in a drive. Any drive that you accidentally used the disk in will need cleaning and possibly felt pad replacement.

 

Once the head is clean and the felt replaced...

 

find a disk with jacket that is not deteriorated or contaminated that you don't mind losing,

carefully break jacket heat seal points along the side of the disk and then slice this newly created flap off with exacto knife, box cutter, utility knife etc

label this clearly so you know it's the clean one.... set to the side

the bad disks get carefully sliced open so as not to damage the media inside... slide it out and keep track of which disk side is up as you go

in a clean area using high alcohol content ipa carefully clean the disk with a soft lint free scratch free material that you can throw away for each area /disk cleaned, if it's being too difficult then use normal dawn dish detergent and then the IPA again. Do not leave the disks to soak, and do not soak them with IPA, you are spot cleaning and giving quick swipes from the center going out on the disks to clean and finish them.

let it air dry in a place free of smoke, oils, vapes or dust.

set oven to 150 to 170 degrees F and let it heat for 15 minutes with squeaky clean glass or ceramic tray/flat cookware in it. turn it off

make sure the oven didn't overshoot temp.(some do) measure it with a gun, meat thermometer or probe so you don't damage media if temp is too high, let it cool down to 150 and as you open the door / move the cookware that temp will continue to fall.

take cleaned disks, put in or on the warm cookware and place back in the oven that is off for an hour.

slide the media into the donor jacket one at a time to read in a disk drive and archive as an atr or copy to another disk...

 

storage temperature for floppy disks is good to 125 degrees Fahrenheit 8 percent humidity for 30 years supposedly

university study says 120 F.

The oven will more than likely be close to that by the time you get the disks into it.

This is very gentle and helps dry the disks out as well as keeping the media bonded to the mylar disk. Some of these disks can lose the ferrite coating otherwise.

 

If you are worried, take the first donor jacket disk media that you don't mind throwing away and test it with that.

 

please be careful handle warm items with clean lint free cloth or mitts. I take no responsibility for accidents burns mistakes etc.

 

http://retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/clean_disks.html

Edited February 13, 2023 by _The Doctor__

[kenp]

11 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

Yes we have and your going to try something insane to some if you want to follow us down the crazy Atari Archivist path...

 

don't run any disk like this in a drive. Any drive that you accidentally used the disk in will need cleaning and possibly felt pad replacement.

 

Once the head is clean and the felt replaced...

 

find a disk with jacket that is not deteriorated or contaminated that you don't mind losing,

carefully break jacket heat seal points along the side of the disk and then slice this newly created flap off with exacto knife, box cutter, utility knife etc

label this clearly so you know it's the clean one.... set to the side

the bad disks get carefully sliced open so as not to damage the media inside... slide it out

in a clean area using high alcohol content ipa carefully clean the disk with a soft lint free scratch free material that you can throw away for each area /disk cleaned, if it's being too difficult then use normal dawn dish detergent and then the IPA again

let it air dry in a place free of smoke, oils, vapes or dust.

set oven to 150 to 170 degrees and let it heat for 15 minutes with squeaky clean glass or ceramic tray/flat cookware in it. turn it off

take cleaned disks put in or on cookware and place back in the oven for an hour.

slide the media into the donor jacket one at a time to read in a disk drive and archive as an atr or copy to another disk...

 

 

Fortunately, maybe, there are no felt pads since it's a double sided drive.  Since finding the bad one I do a visual inspection of any new disk I take out of the box now.

 

I could follow you until you got to the oven part.  Now, we have plastic film money here in Canada and all you need to do is leave a bill on the dashboard on a hot sunny day to create abstract money art.  The internal disk from the floppies hasn't got much on the film for our money and you're suggesting putting it in an oven.  Gonna have to think on it a bit.  Likely give it a try when there are few other disks to convert.

 

Would this fully remove the mildew (for lack of a better term) or will there still be some discolouration?

 

Everything that I cannot find in someone else' ATR library is going to be moved over to ATRs.  That will likely bring this down to some disks of my own programming that I did and the files for our old club newsletter.  I found notes mentioning a utility for "unpacking" ATRs into just regular files in directories on PCs or Linux.  Then they could be rearranged repacked into new ATRs.  This would also make it easier, I think, to move stuff between SpartaDOS and MyDOS file systems.  We'll see, I guess.

 

Still amazed and beguiled by the amount of work still going on for these machines.  I just found, today, a MiniITX version of the 8 bit atari.  I hope to see a full Linux, eventually.  🙂

 

[_The Doctor__]

150 Fahrenheit at turn off isn't going to damage a disk for a few reasons as it will be cooling down. You are probably thinking Celsius which would be terrible. 65 degrees celsius and falling is better description for you maybe? Remember the oven is cooling down, you are not actively heating as the oven is off at this point. When you turn it off and take the cookware out heat leaves, and the cookware is cooling down, the disks go in and the oven cools down more as they are placed back in the oven. This is very gentle and helps dry the disks out as well as keeping the media bonded to the mylar disk. Some of these disks can lose the ferrite coating otherwise.

 

If you are worried, take the first donor jacket disk media that you don't mind throwing away and test it with that. Your mind will be at ease then yes?

 

to satisfy curiosity we can take a known dead disk and see when the shrinky dink art point is reached, everyone can get out the temperature guns etc. but be ready with open windows and fan if you take things too far. Some folks might be vicious and melt, torture, or want beavis and buttheads fire fire fire routine!  I said to be careful but hey, fire extinguishers exist for those inclined to blow up capacitor, resistors, and melt disks...

Edited February 11, 2023 by _The Doctor__

[_The Doctor__]

storage temperature for floppy disks is good to 125 degrees Fahrenheit 8 percent humidity for 30 years supposedly

university study says 120 F.

The oven will more than likely be close to that by the time you get the disks into it. like I said, test it.

Edited February 11, 2023 by _The Doctor__

[Rybags]

I've had luck duplicating a disk by removing from the jacket (generally you'd be throwing away the original.

It might also be a useful way to attempt to clean the disk.

Alcohol = bad idea, it can remove the oxide.

Maybe something like diluted ammonia.  Though that staining looks fairly embedded.

Simply taking it out of the jacket might help, the crud on it might be slowing the rotation down.

[_The Doctor__]

a quick wipe down hasn't hurt any that I've done, I need to add more detail to the post. explaining time frame too I guess. soaking the disk in alcohol would be very bad. Careful quick wipe to remove the gunk has been fine, failing that regular dawn dish detergent water has gotten this off and a quick wipe again was done and allowed to dry, the warm oven taking the moisture out.

@Albert, may I edit the reported post to give more detail and guidance. I need to make it better for folks new to this sort of thing.

 

http://retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/clean_disks.html

Edited February 11, 2023 by _The Doctor__

[kenp]

9 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said:

150 Fahrenheit at turn off isn't going to damage a disk for a few reasons as it will be cooling down. You are probably thinking Celsius which would be terrible. 65 degrees celsius and falling is better description for you maybe? Remember the oven is cooling down, you are not actively heating as the oven is off at this point. When you turn it off and take the cookware out heat leaves, and the cookware is cooling down, the disks go in and the oven cools down more as they are placed back in the oven. This is very gentle and helps dry the disks out as well as keeping the media bonded to the mylar disk. Some of these disks can lose the ferrite coating otherwise.

 

If you are worried, take the first donor jacket disk media that you don't mind throwing away and test it with that. Your mind will be at ease then yes?

 

to satisfy curiosity we can take a known dead disk and see when the shrinky dink art point is reached, everyone can get out the temperature guns etc. but be ready with open windows and fan if you take things too far. Some folks might be vicious and melt, torture, or want beavis and buttheads fire fire fire routine!  I said to be careful but hey, fire extinguishers exist for those inclined to blow up capacitor, resistors, and melt disks...

Shrinky dink art, eh?  that's going back a ways.  I was thinking of that example as well but didn't figure it would be known here.  Likely need to adjust how many older folks I think are still active.  Always considered myself a sort of outlier.  But, then, the internet lets all these outliers find each other, eventually.

 

Knowing the storage temperature can be as high as 125 helps even more, though. 

 

Back in the day, keeping the disk clean was a big factor in the arguments about flippies.  If you punched a read hole in the other side of the disk then when you flipped it over you could be dragging stuff that might have gotten caught in the liner back out since the disk was now spinning in the opposite direction.

Edited February 11, 2023 by kenp

[+Allan]

12 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said:

Yes we have and your going to try something insane to some if you want to follow us down the crazy Atari Archivist path...

 

don't run any disk like this in a drive. Any drive that you accidentally used the disk in will need cleaning and possibly felt pad replacement.

 

Once the head is clean and the felt replaced...

 

find a disk with jacket that is not deteriorated or contaminated that you don't mind losing,

carefully break jacket heat seal points along the side of the disk and then slice this newly created flap off with exacto knife, box cutter, utility knife etc

label this clearly so you know it's the clean one.... set to the side

the bad disks get carefully sliced open so as not to damage the media inside... slide it out and keep track of which disk side is up as you go

in a clean area using high alcohol content ipa carefully clean the disk with a soft lint free scratch free material that you can throw away for each area /disk cleaned, if it's being too difficult then use normal dawn dish detergent and then the IPA again

let it air dry in a place free of smoke, oils, vapes or dust.

 

I've used just this part a number of times with success.

[kenp]

4 hours ago, Allan said:

I've used just this part a number of times with success.

Very good.  More to make me feel this will be okay.  But I'm going to handle the easier to convert disks first, I think.  Less chance of doing damage to them than if I intersperse the clean and the dirty.

[kenp]

Along the lines of trying to clean the heads on the drives, I've noticed that a newly acquired drive seems to need a cover removed to access the heads directly, a Panasonic JU-455-7AJ0, to be specific.

Any concerns about letting this run without the cover or using an old fashioned head cleaning disk  (yeah, I've still got one.  I've even got an 8" head cleaning disk.)  if I'm going to be needing to clean this on a regular basis for a while.

 

And,  I seem to have already suffered from my first KIA floppy.  The disk that I was using to boot SpartaDOS seemed to give up the ghost and would no longer boot.  When I checked I had two neat little circles etched into the ferrite layer with the light shining through.  Had to admit it was dead, Jim.

 

Used to see that back when I was working in an IT department in Support.  The old 3270 terminal controllers depended on a floppy dsk to boot.  They'd get full of dust to the point where we'd ask a user to take the disk out and blow into the slot to try and clear it then reboot again.  Eventually the floppies would just no longer boot and it was usually the case that they'd been etched through like this.  The service guys hated having to drop everything to go and configure a new controller boot disk.

[_The Doctor__]

cleaning disk is fine if you lost coating just run it twice, it seems you know the drill. If the drive still seems subpar, run it again. I find wet dry works well

Edited February 12, 2023 by _The Doctor__

[Geister]

I've used the old cleaning disks with great success. It's better than running goods disks on a dirty head and ending up with concentric circles etched into the disk surface.  The first thing I do with a new/old drive is remove the top and swap the heads with alcohol.  it can take a couple tries to remove stubborn dirt, and it's better than regrooving your disks.  "Returned for regrooving",  are you that old?

 

 

Spoiler

Firesign Theater if you don't know.

 

Edited February 12, 2023 by Geister

[kenp]

Somewhat along the lines of a lint free cloth or tissue that you can toss after one use got me thinking of alcohol soaked lens wipes, for glasses and such, that you can buy in boxes of 100 at WalMart that seem to fit the bill.  They're quite wet with alcohol.

 

I'm going to have to sacrifice a couple of disks, I think, to sort out which of these drives is still etching the floppies.  Might need to get a new pair of glasses to really see what's happening on the heads.  Nothing obvious has shown up on the swabs when I try to alcohol clean the heads.

 

Meanwhile, I've been simply sorting through the floppies doing an inspection to see which ones are dirty and which ones are already represented in some of these .ATR libraries already.  For example, I have a copy of Omnitrend's 5 floppy Universe set but they are already in the Holmes library.

 

I was 10 years old when Firesign appeared and it likely just didn't catch with me then so I didn't follow it.  Given the time I imagine the joke was that people would have played their records to the point of smoothing out the wiggles in the grooves and would take them back for regrooving so they could continue to get their groove on.

 

There's so much already available I might just concentrate on finding and transferring the programs and files that were generated by myself and the Atari User group we had at the time.  Especially my old Pirate Atari logo that I made up.  I tried to make another but I'd like to find the original.  I have a disk with a label that says yohoho.inx but I haven't found any notice of whether the .inx is a graphics file or its program.  It's interesting that this new file is actually larger then the original capacity of the Atari floppy disk and we don't even think about file sizes any longer.  This image is going to be larger as well, I'm certain, that my old original, too.

Edited February 13, 2023 by kenp
added more inconsequential comments

[_The Doctor__]

Be careful as glass cleaning wipes usually contain surfacants, cleaners, and waxes, the 'paper' they are on can scratch stuff. The lenses are normally glass or coated plastics on glasses that the cleaning tissue won't harm, but will harm many other soft plastics and coatings when it comes to other items.

[BillC]

On 2/12/2023 at 4:43 PM, kenp said:

I'm going to have to sacrifice a couple of disks, I think, to sort out which of these drives is still etching the floppies.  Might need to get a new pair of glasses to really see what's happening on the heads.  Nothing obvious has shown up on the swabs when I try to alcohol clean the heads.

I use a small dental inspection mirror to view the upper head when cleaning my double-sided drives.

[kenp]

5 hours ago, BillC said:

I use a small dental inspection mirror to view the upper head when cleaning my double-sided drives.

That's a great idea and I know I have such a thing somewhere around here. 

[kenp]

The number of disks is getting smaller, indeed.  After pruning out the obvious dirty disks I've been checking the rest and find a bunch of them, numbered with special labels, seem to be blank.  Not surprising.  I always did like routine drudge work so sticking numbers on disks would have kept me busy.  I'll hold these probably blank disks aside as well in case I get something that can analyze them more closely.