I'm sorry, but this video really DOES need an update. I cannot see HOW there is any possibility to use a soldering iron on the white plastic section to fix the horizontal lines. That piece HAS to be removed, or the screen removed again to access the ribbon cable strips. No WAY can the heat pass through that piece without melting it.
So, I know this is really late, but I have several 3-1/2 in floppies that I need to repair. I cut the film inside before tossing, then found my photo program didn't save them. Would splicing tape work...? Does anyone know of a program that reads the old Kodak discs that you got when developing film?
I have a gameboy with bivert and backlight. tried fixing my vertical lines but couldn’t get it to work. I don’t think I was letting the iron heat it for long enough or making good contact. Guess I was worried to overheat it but I will try this again and not be afraid to hold it on there for a little longer
Hello, when trying to read a floppy disk it tells me that it has no format and to format it, I don't want to lose that information that it has inside, the disk is from 1996, I can do something to rescue that information safely. thank you
I have a lot of floppies mostly HD 3.5" 1.44mb disks, all of them i tested failed, and the drive have been cleaned, i dont understand why, I tested with other drives and other computers so for me your trick didn work. I guess the disks was not stored the right way, thats sad I think i might have close to 1000 disks, which might not work...
You are amazing! If only I watched this before spending a solid month: 1. getting a replacement 3.5 for my Roland W30 which died trying to read my old disks (probably just needed cleaning from the crude on the old disks), 2. then an external USB floppy which couldn't read DSDD, then 3. getting USB floppy replacement on my Roland W30 which led to 4. finding a vintage Dell desktop with a 3.5 floppy to transfer to the USB format, but still couldn't read many of the old disks. Following your video, I just cleaned one of my "unreadable" disk and IT WORKS ! Bless you ! Sharing your experience has helped so many of us ! I am happy with the USB replacement and your video should smooth out the bumps converting the 3.5 floppies into digital USB.
Quite a few remarks on this video. the magnetic surface gold mould and the internal sheath/coating got contaminated as well. The best way for cleaning disks is to use 70% alcohol (never 90% alcohol it's too harsh) with precision coton buds (not those for ears, those for makeup people). Then simply apply 2 drops of alcohol in the reading window of the disk, and use a floppy cleaner support for 3,5" disks or 5,25" disks. then turn gently, it will kill the mould on the disk surface and also on the internal coating/sheath. repeat on the other side of the disk and that's it. Never use any cloth or paper on the disk surface, this can displace the flux stream of the track (it's very very hard to fix that so don't). And that's it. I have cleaned this way more than 2500 original games with this method (3", 3,5", and 5,25" disks).
I recently bought a bulk of 3.5" USB Floppy Drives. After opening and cleaning them they did finally work, but only for a few diskettes and eventually inaccessible errors popped up again. After encountering this issue again and again I finally found out that 3.5" Cleaning Disks exist and are a gift from the heavens. The disks I'm trying to run are from the 80s and 90s with dust & dirt on them older than I am. After a few passes with the cleaning disk the drives all are working as needed. Highly recommend a Cleaning Disk, you get a bottled cleaning solution and a disk with a microfiber inside that passes over the drive head and generally can be used 10-15 times.
I have a question. When you inserted the polarizing film. You said there was the yellow we all know and then rotated it to get a blue color. Could I technically leave it as the yellow? I prefer that look for nostalgia's sake. But want a backlight to be able to see better. Thanks!
Great video! I however did not succeed in getting data back from the diskettes. It seems my Sony Mavica camera just randomly sometimes decides to smash the head onto the drive making any data recovery impossible. Edit: It could also be that the disks that I have have accumulated mold or dirt while sitting outside in a shed and the oxide layer is coming off the floppy while trying to use it. It seems to affect mostly my Nashua floppies that are possibly the newest in my collection (bought in 2005-2006).
Hi, unfortunately it never worked for me, but it stopped me spending ££££££ going to a data recovery service who may only have employed similar cleaning techniques. My data had evaporated over time, and cleaning in this way helped me to confirm that. You are an absolute star! thank you very much :-)
I think I might have had this exactly issue, Okay so I put in a new used floppy and it read my disk. Than when i tried to put my windows 98 boot disk in and tried to read that disk it said error. And now it says error on all my disk I try to use with it. So all those disk I put in the drive after it broke and those all bad now? I think I only tried 3 disk's should I throw those 3 disk's away?
Best thing you can do at the moment is clean the reader of your floppy drive because it might have because filthy due to one of those floppies and it is unable to read the others anymore. So, I recommend you uninstall the floppy drive, take it apart so that you can get to the reader/laser and clean it with a cotton swab and some cleaning alcohol. If all goes well, after you put it back together and reinstalled it, it will read the floppies again. Just don't use the one that was filthy else you can start all over again. That one floppy that caused the problems you could try and clean like I show in the video and hopefully it's enough to get out all the filth to be able to read again. Good luck!
I just want to say, thank you. My Home Alone 2 Disk 2 floppy was given me a CDC error and I did this and it worked. Your video was most helpful and straight forward. :)
Love it! One of these days I will get a midi module to pair with one of my PCs. I remember when I was 13 or so with my first PC and I never understood what the Roland/MT-32 option meant in the installers for DOS games back in the day.
What madness is this?! I've been in the IT industry for 30+ years and have never heard of tearing down a floppy diskette and cleaning it manually like this. Holy crap, the disks I've pitched over the years figuring they were a lost cause. I'll be trying this for myself. Thanks for the video.
I have a disk that is warped and the metal slide is damaged. The 'madness' is finding an expert who knows how to remove the plastic info and putting it into a new disk. You have a problem with that? Why? Have you learned nothing in your 30+ years about this type of data recovery? It seems not. (Posted Jan 22, 2022)
Nope. I held a breath for a moment myself. Then I remembered that one Nostalgia Nerd video about exactly how much magnetic power you need to disrupt a diskette.
Then I watched the rest of the video, thinking to myself "yea but it's ALL your floppies that are dirty as ass, have fun cleaning all that crap dude" lol
Great video man, well done. What temperature did you use for your soldering iron and do you hold the iron just above the points or do you actually touch them?
4:37 I would recommend single strokes from the hub to the outside of the disk. If there's debris on the disk itself, you could end up scratching the disk by moving it back and forth along the surface. I also had a disk where I attempted this trick, but it was a lost cause. The actual coating had flaked off, and cleaning it just removed the coating. It actually crashed the head on one of my floppy drives, which promptly scratched and destroyed the next disk that was inserted (I was backing up a bunch of vintage floppy disks.)
@@michaelda94 Interesting video thx for your tutorial. So you are saying you have to melt THROUGH the thick plastic that is infact the surface of the screen, in the horizontal line trouble area, in order to get to the solder points underneath?
Cleaning the disk worked!! Thank you so much, I’m almost in shock, I bought Dagger of Amon Ra and disks 1-4 read np then the last disk failed. After cleaning per your instructions it read no problem! I even noticed a build up of some kind of junk on the disk and once gone it sure enough worked. I wonder how many disks I’ve written off as data corrupted that just needed a cleaning... I’ll be doing this all night now lol Thank you again mate!
Hi Andrew, sure, if you have a midi instrument or a soundcard / audio interface that has a midi-out then you can hook it up to the SC-55 and the SC-55 to your audio input to hear what comes out.
Sid, I get an I/O error when trying to boot and some noise (totally different from the usual one). Tested lots of floppies and the drive couldn't read any. Could it be the drive itself? Maybe the cable? Or maybe even the motherboard, although it is recognized?
Hi Rogell, sorry for the late reply. It sounds like it's an issue with the drive. Have you been able to fix it? It could be the cable which you can test if you have another cable to try.
Am I the only one who gets a lot of glue chunks when trying to remove this films? I swear, every video I see I notice that they barely have any residue left after they remove the screen. In my case the glue was so thic that after removing it I had to scrub with alcohol and nail polish remover for over 1 hour and I ended up messing up my screen as vertical lines disappeared and I don't seem to fix it. Is there any tips you can give me to prevent this?
