Cleaning Floppy Disks, will it fix them? 

Unfortunately, the "dirt" you saw on the cotton buds wasn't dirt; it was part of the oxide layer coming off the wafer. This explains why some disks were worse after cleaning. Unfortunately, there's not much you can do in those situations.

I contacted TDK if they would ever consider making brand new batches of floppies, they were polite but not interested. If we all signed a petition then maybe someone would!

Back in the old days of fixing amiga disks that went though hell aka killed by magnetic fields of TV or Speakers ... you copied sectors to the same disc 5 to 8 times in "X-copy" ... fist you scan the disc to find if it has bad sectors in X-copy : 6 means BAD sector , 8 also means bad but its also means disc was damaged by magnetic fields ... then you simply mark those sectors and recopy them 5 to 8 times to the same disc... by this method you can fix many Amiga games ... when they boot and are good , you do a copy of it and store it ... but a word of warning, some Original Amiga discs had Sector DRM ...so even if you fix the Data , the Non-readable sectors of the DRM could be damaged making the disc fail ... but X-copy was the silver repair\piracy tool for all

As a recent returnee to DOS/Windows 98 gaming I ran in to my first floppy disk failure this morning. Your video prompted me to take a closer look at my disk 1 of the original Civilization, and there was indeed a smear on the disk. A spot of IPA cleared it up and it's now installed just fine. While it won't solve your disk woes, you at least helped a brother out!

Loving the Sensible Soccer big box!

3.5" disk spindles have two holes in them, the center hole and a rectangular hole set off to the side. I have seen another design out there for the disk holding jig where the spindle turning thingy has 2 pins on it instead of 1, so it engages both of the holes in the spindle. That one would probably grip the spindle better so you wouldn't have the problem where the thing just spins in place. Great idea clamping the thing in a vise. In hindsight it is totally obvious, but for whatever reason that idea never occurred to me.

I've had success cleaning floppies - I realise I was lucky with the batch I had and they were just dirty rather than damaged. Basically, crack open up the case at the bottom edge and drop out the disk itself. With a little neat washing up liquid, go all over both surfaces of the disk, rub it in well and give it time to work. If the disk comes away from the little metal carrier it sits on, don't worry about it for now. Now wash the soap off and make sure you dry the disk really well. Now you can re-attach the metal carrier VERY CAREFULLY with a small smear of superglue. Slide the disk and carrier back inside the case and seal the case with a tiny smear of superglue. Now test it. I've had success with this method but use it as a last resort ;)

I'm so glad I made disk images of all my old games that were on floppy's. When one of the originals gives an error, I succeeded sometimes in just writing the image I had again on the disk. Unfortunately this does not work all the time (if the disk is actually just broken beyond repair). What you can do to have the "original" disk, is pry open the floppy, and replace the disk with one of a floppy dat does work, and reassemble the floppy disk again. It's a bit of a hassle, but you can save the "housing" of the original floppy this way, with a working disk inside. I recommend "practising" this technique first with some floppies you don't actually need.

I left my school disk in my shirt pocket. One trip round the washing machine later it was very clean! Still worked too, surprisingly.

Excellent video. I have collection of Atari 1050 drives with 5.25" floppies. These days when I use it I remove the lid to make sure the head is clean and that a disk doesn't leave dirt on the heads after use as this can damage the next disk put in the drive. Also I keep my floppies well stored with moisture capture cartons in the same room. Seems to work! Occasionally get the odd disk that develops a bad sector, and your demonstration is a brilliant way to fix it. Great to see others with the same passion for retro! All the best 🙂

Good Video . Like you had in the video I have had mixed results with cleaning disks. If you do not have a 3D printer you can use a piece of tape to hold open the floppy's door while cleaning. As a last result I have written a floppy image to a new blank and swapped internals with the original to make a good working 'original'

I've had some success with using compressed air and blowing it through the hole in the hub and around the outside of the hub. Also through the door both sides. I use a compressor with water trap filter and a pressure regulator to drop the pressure. Doesn't always work but worth a try. Great video. Thanks.

I had WAY better results using warm soapy water (just a bit of dish soap) than I did with IPA. It did a phenomenal job cleaning off mold from some old disks. IPA just sort of smeared the crap around versus actually cleaning it. Said moldy disks had destroyed two of my floppy drives (Macintosh Sony variable speed drives, so it's not like I can just swap them around with generic drives.) Audible screeeach, then a thunk. Neither drive would read floppy disks after many attempts at cleaning the heads with IPA. However, after my success with cleaning the mold off the disks themselves with warm soapy water, I did the same with my floppy drives. Brought both drives back to life. So if you have a disk that wasn't working after a clean with IPA, I'd say give warm soapy water a try. Use the IPA to clean any soap residue that might be left.

There is a discussion on EAB at the moment with regards disk cleaning, it may be worth checking out. I got the impression after skim reading that a lower concentration isoprop is what to go for. Have a read, it may help for future endeavours. I have to say, all your gear is remarkably clean and spanky looking. Whatever you're doing to keep it in that condition is excellent. I have recently gotten a few old Amigas to restore properly and certainly that level of cleanliness is my goal for them!

Great video and congrats on the 2k+ subs mate. That's awesome. Re disk cleaning, sadly I had already tried this exact method on an entire Tenstar Games pack for the Amiga, including Barbarian. Now to be fair, ALL Ten were terrible, none loaded except Mercenary (once) and ALL made horrid scraping noises. The A500 itself was hardly used by it's previous owner. As a result, the drive is squeaky clean and all other disks work 100% fine all the time. So.....I took to cleaning the disks as you did, and NONE worked and then even Mercenary failed. They all continued to make horrid noises and Barbarian disk failed completely to the point the disk surface came away from the center wheel. Why? Well, because this method "can" be too harsh. Apparently the better method is to use a little ISO on a macrofibre. Using the caddy you printed, you hold the disk open and hold the fiber lightly on BOTH sides of the disk while turning the wheel. This applies much less ISO than the botton bud method and is less abrasive to the surface of the disk. Seems like a fine art. NOW....all that aside, I did also clean 2 Amiga Format cover disks with the cotton bud method (STOP OVERRIGHTING OR BINNING THOSE BY THE WAY lol ;) ) and they seemed to fail. I randomly tried them again a few months later. They first failed...and then...they both WORKED! So.....I dunno lol. I think it's a very fine art and depends greatly on the reason for the initial failure. Going forward, I'll be looking to get a Greeseweazle to restore original disk images to new media, and swap out the guts. Also risky but I can't make the disks any worse than they are now lol.

Thanks for the video. Nicely done. I’m working on some 5.25 disks at the moment and just as you said the magnetic field stuff is going over my head. Trying to learn a bit more though. Kryoflux makes a card to read disks with weak fields (could make a dad joke here, but will hold off). Keep the vids coming.

It's not at all unheard of for aging disks to read better in some drives than others. So it never hurts to try your problem disks in another drive.

very interesting that outcome... reminds me of the consistency I had back in those days with my own games/programs especially making it 5 discs in all the way to 8x% only to have it fail the moment you speak. I can still taste the frustration from my own 386/486/P90 😝 lol I think it was moments like the one where it worked till you spoke that are probably responsible for creating superstition in my life 🔮

"I don't have a joystick connected." Well then connect one!

Sounds like a case of, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ - but if your big box games are dying, it’s definitely worth a pop. Aside, out with of something like FluxEngine (which isn’t hard btw) to try and recover the original images have you thought about downloading disk images from online and writing them to different disks, and then transferring the magnetic platters into the original floppy cases? Either way, great video, and very informative. Thanks.

With my Amiga I only use my disk drive to image disks. These can be created in ADF format for use and to backup the disk. You can also image out to a disk if it fails or the data gets corrupted.

I've just tried this on some discs I was imaging with a DiscFerret (same principles apply to Greaseweazle, which works the same way). Discs were showing patterns of errors in blotches on the HxC Floppy Editor "disc" view. I cleaned them with a foam swab and isopropyl and re-read them, and got a good read from most the second time around. Trying other brands of disc drive and cleaning the heads helped too. Sadly I've yet to find a good solution for 3.5in discs where the hub has detached from the magnetic disc 'cookie'.

Nice job!

That's why I always try to create a disk image of my original software. Fortunately, I was able to do it to most of the disks I bought first hand. But some of the games I bought used was 'no go'. Conquest of Camelot, for instance, the 3.5" disks were all good, but the 5.25, kids 1 to 4 were unreadable, but I've not tried to clean them yet. Also, in the past, I've made the error of putting dirty disks (with mould) in a drive... the movement and contact with the drive head was enough to damage the oxide layer. It is also crucial to clean the disk drive after this type of incidents, to avoid contaminating other floppies.

You can try my cleaning kit, you can find the download in the link in the description here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-I-MKpgO4nOY.html. It uses the off center hole to turn the disk donut, and I use a microfiber cloth instead of a cotton bud which can leave dust inside the disk. I've cleaned more than 300 disks successfully with this thing. I don't really print and sell them anymore but you can have it done by a friend or online.

I´m a bit late, but there are my 2 cents in the 3d printer issue. The wall-infill gaps can have several causes: - Improper filament diameter. Unfortunately, some brands don´t give the full 1.75 section so there´s some under extruding. Test with the caliper to average the size and adjust the material in Cura if it´s wrong. - Printing speed, temp, flow, retraction settings can affect the results too. Ideally some testing to catch the ideal settings for every material can give the best result. As the overall quality seems quite decent (on camera, though), I´d suggest going straigt to measure the filament, and if it´s ok just seek the "outline overlap" setting and rise it a bit. You can also rise the flow a bit if other areas lack material too (when you point the gaps the top right area printing lines look a bit empty). Hope it helps. Cheers

I've found useful, for old and apparently bad damaged floppies, to let them mildly dry below my A1200 w Blizzard. After a few hours "warming", they turned readable and working again. In my case it was moisture, not dirty. Cheers, M

Nice vid, How long did it take to print the holder?

Fun relaxing vid as always..... well as soon as ya get over the big hairy angry bear lad having floppy issues..... (just teasing)

I used to open the disk, and then clean CAREFULY prependicular from the center to the outside, and then put the disk inside the plastic case again , and close-it. and it worked for me.

fixed several Amiga disk with this :)

Once you succeed in rescuing a whole set of disks by cleaning them, you ought to try to find any NOS disks of the same density that you can back them up to, as well as backing them up as install images onto a hard disk, optical, flash, or all 3, if it seems like someone hasn't done so already, so that you might not lose that game from all functional existence.

Use superformat (part of fdutils, available with most linux distros) to low-level-format the diskette.

it works! thnks!

Sometimes I magnet wipe disks that look physically clean but still has errors. This can often refresh/restore them (magnetically) and allow you to rewrite the original image back on to them without errors.

So IPA could cause issues. I know it's good for cleaning the heads of disk and tape drives but those tend to me made up of metallic or similar material. Any plastic-based material can be impacted, esp depending on the strength of it (i.e. 99% is worse than 50%' -- I tested a bunch of products on plastics after I damaged a portable amp's exterior surface and IPA causes a chemical reaction on certain types of material). Here is part of an abstract of a paper about restoring magnetic recording media (fixing "sticky shed"): "A liquid cleaner, such as isopropyl alcohol, is applied to the Backcoating to dissolve it from and clean it off the Mylar Base. Before the liquid cleaner is applied, steps are taken to prevent the cleaner fluid from getting onto the Oxide side of the tape. The chemical cleaning is done as quickly as possible... the Oxide side of the tape is given a dry, non-chemical cleaning to remove the residue of contamination of the Backcoating which was deposited on the Oxide side of the tape as the result of physical contact with the Backcoating from the storage on the reel ..."

I just cleaned 4 of my Amiga disk drives the other day, 2 of them were not reading anything but now they all are. Never tried cleaning any disks yet but I have my Amiga big box games mainly as shelf fillers anyway and play them from hard disk when I want to.

Something worth considering is to make copies of your important collectable disks onto a preferred media type and only use the copies. You'd be surprised how many HD floppies can fit on to a modern sized media like flash disks or HDDs.

Set an ender 3 to 108% if you want a perfect and very snug fit with the printed knobs square into the disks spindle key hole :)

My understanding is that it works for dirty disks (dirty with dust and other particles), but not for scratched disks. As for "de-magnetized" (if that's a word in english? :)) I think I remember that some disk utilities claimed to "revive" somewhat those kind of disks... My memeory may be failing, here though :( As usual, very cool vid :)

Just blindly cleaning the disks won't give much success. You need to pair it up with something like Greaseweazle (flux level reader/writer) so that you can dump an image of the disk an analyse it for errors. Greaseweazle can also be used to rewrite original images back to the disk, or to a donor disk and then replace the damaged and unrecoverable media.

Regarding the noisy disk, I'd be worried about that as noise means vibration from friction, and friction on that media is not good... Probably a larger than normal particle is caught in the felt lining of the disk internals and is rubbing on the surface of the disk. I would be cautious of the IPA as I use that as a solvent in some cases.. I guess it could make matters worse for the media, though it seemed ok. Maybe some IPA was still on the disc, absorbed by the same felt lining of the disc, making it grab it more and slow it down? I would only do this to problematic discs though, if it works, don't clean it maybe? Finally, for magnetic fading, maybe invest in a Kyroflux and rewrite a flux file from someone else's working copy back to the disk? Needed for some originals due to their complex copy protection.

Could you re-write a disk image to the disk to refresh the magnetic fields on them ?

Did you try formatting and checking for bad sectors after cleaning up?

Just curious-- Is it possible to replace the media inside the case from a good disk without irrepairably damaging the original disk?

How do you open them up to get dirt out?

Why didn't someone design the knob so that it would have a key that plugs into that other hole in the hub? And why does it have that wedge notch in it?

I did it few hours ago and now my FDD is not working and disk which was partially ureadable now is completly damaged.

Hi Glen... lots of info here but I don't know if any is actually of use to you. Around 6 or so months ago I was really struggling with floppies. It turned out to be a UEFI/motherboard/win7 problem and not the actual drives and floppies themselves, but it looked like it was the floppies at the time. As a result I bought loads of new old stock, and drives, and old pirate disks to use as blanks, and I also have a load of boxed games. I'm a bit funny in that I do not want to use goteks at all. Ideally I want to use real floppy disks and I have various machines that use 3", 3.5" and 5.25". So far I've noticed that boxed games have disks that last way better than the ones in cardboard boxes or in the plastic 80 disk boxes. It may be down to better quality of disk but I suspect it's more to do with how they're stored. I think it's something out of the following - dust, mould, spilt drinks, hot/cold cycles, sweat/grease freezing/thawing, damp that causes the problems. I think a bit of grease on the surface of a disk in 1989 might see it still working in 1990, but by 2020 it could have killed it. I don't know if it's some or all of those conditions, though. Something you didn't mention, or at least I don't think you did. And something nobody else really seems to mention either is the paper disc inside the disk. Inside each disk there are two and they're glued to the plastic housing. They can be removed if you break the disk open a bit. I don't know if it needs to be opened all the way or if you could grab and pull them out with tweezers. The white discs are there to keep the magnetic surface clean but I have a huge suspicion that they can end up killing the disks, and I think that's what killed your Monkey Island disk. I think debris can get lodged on the white disc and rub against the magnetic surface and that's why you might see lines on it. I also think the white discs could end up deforming and end up growing in size - imagine a piece of paper that gets splashed and dries - and that is what the nasty sound is of old disks spinning, it's the swollen white disk rubbing against the magnetic surface. I don't know if a swollen disc will hinder the disk spinning to the point it causes errors? I don't know if a problem disk can have the white paper discs removed and perhaps it might help. As for cleaning the disks with IPA I would suggest it's only done where a problem is found. I have the same frame and knob as you - if only it was really that simple to get a bigger knob - and I've used it successfully on disks. The disks I fixed were bulk new old stock. These were clearly budget disks and had been presumably sealed into a plastic bag in 50s 25+ years ago. Some of them I could see some kind of contaminant on them and with IPA and a cotton bud I was able to clean them, and by repeatedly trying to format them I got them working. The problem with this is that for an ST or Amiga disk we need 100% of it to work, but if it's a PC disk and there's a few bad sectors we can probably still get away with it. I've lots more I want to do with disks - and I have over 1,000 NOS and blanks to play with but it won't be for a long time. I would expect, and this is going out on a limb that eventually I will take a commercial game disk and break it open (they can be resealed with glue) and remove the dead disk and replace it with a working one that I've written in Greaseweazle and by doing that I will have repaired the game disk, and it will be identical to what it once was. I also don't agree with people that say that all disks are going to die and they have a finite lifespan. I don't think that's necessarily true. We don't know what the rate of decay on the disks is, but there's no reason to assume that it's going to happen in our lifetimes, maybe it will, maybe it won't. I hope that in some way helps Glen, sorry it's such a long read.

floppy disks are all ticking time bombs

I’d recommend Steve Gibson’s SpinRite disk recovery software for resurrecting floppies and hard drives. You can find out more here: www.grc.com/

I was hoping that cleaning would fix the disks, because I have a ton of disks that doesn't get read or have errors. I have some old porn, errr important files that I would like to retrieve. :P

HD discs were always a bit more flakey than DD if i remember correctly.?

Maybe you have missalign the driveheads?

ORRRR.... you could just take the shutter off, clean and spin the disk, and then reattach the shutter.

I think the combination of ageing drives and heads combined with ageing floppy disk material means they should be immediately converted to ADF files and then write the data back to new disks if you want to still use floppies? I think with the advent of Gotek drives and some new improved Gotek like drives, the era of floppies is long over, they are too slow and too prone to failure. Practically every Amiga I have bought and refurbished has had faulty drives and yes you can fix them, but it's probably not worth the hassle. To me it's a bit like vinyl disks, when I got a new album I would immediately record it to the best quality tapes I could afford and never use the disk again until my tape wore out and then I would buy a new one and record from the album again. So over many years the disk would only be read a few times keeping the wear caused by the record player needle to a minimum. I think floppies are now the same, the act of reading the disks causes wear so you want to keep it to a minimum so I would record to ADF and use the ADFs instead of wearing the disk any more than you have to. At least if you have the box and the disk and the manuals you can prove that you have the right to own the ADF files. Also keeping the boxes and manuals is a good collector thing as they look good on your shelves even if the disk no longer works.

If I use alcohol will it do the same? (I don't care if the data gets corrupted lol)

Playing an Amiga Disk is no Guarantee of wholeness. Try scanning with x-copy or similar. I thought you were going to split the disks to clean them.

Good video, but why do you British/Irish guys never pronounce the "t" in your words?

Change your title !! That’s not floppy disks 🤦🏻‍♂️