Hi guys,
I have recently been going over a large collection of original software from very disparate origins, and wanted to share a little tip for those who enjoy using floppy disks now and then, or are just collectors.
There are basically three reasons why a floppy disk may not work when you boot it:
1. The software is not compatible with your system: beyond the obvious AGA / OCS incompatibility, older games assume a lot of things about the systems they run in. This will usually result in a crash or blank screen, even if you have the same machine the software was designed for, any minor upgrade can drive it to fail, and it will always fail at the same point. You may get them to work disabling caches, using tools like Relokick, or downgrading your expansion board with the included software.
2. The disk is permanently damaged. This will usually result in screaming noises from the floppy drive (if its a NODOS disk) or in the case of DOS disks, repeated reports of failing to read a certain block which won't go away with a retry. Nothing to do here but you could try cleaning the surface with alcohol, a process I haven't tried myself yet. Some disks could get spillage from drinks and whatnot which should be removable in this way but I havent had success with this yet.
3. The third and last case is the most frequent in my experience and the one which I actually wanted to talk about. You may not be very familiar with the idea (we always would say that a disk is corrupt as if it was something permanent) as its something that happens mostly to disks that have been stored for long. I assume a fine layer of dust forms on them or something of that sort - haven't investigated the specifics because I'm not much of a scientist.
What matters for my purposes is noticing how these will behave, which is... erratically. The drive will usually make a looping noise similar to a sewing machine, and every time you reboot, the game may crash at a different points in the loading process. DOS disks will report errors in different blocks and sometimes Retrying the reading of these will do away with the error.
What these sort of disks need to work again is simply to be READ, block by block, one or two times, which seems to do away with the "dust particles" or whatever it is that causes the errors. You could let them load until the point they failed last time until they work, but this is a slow process and it won't always work. Instead, clean it all in one go by using some tool which reads the disk such as a disk imager (DMS, DiskMimic....) - personally I found Disksalv in Check mode to work best as it does several passes - and let it run.
If your disk is not actually physically damaged, and in most cases it won't, this will make it work again. This has restored about three quarters of the faulty disks in the collection.
I wonder if anyone has tried more thorough and complex cleaning to revive a floppy disk and what are your experiences.
I have recently been going over a large collection of original software from very disparate origins, and wanted to share a little tip for those who enjoy using floppy disks now and then, or are just collectors.
There are basically three reasons why a floppy disk may not work when you boot it:
1. The software is not compatible with your system: beyond the obvious AGA / OCS incompatibility, older games assume a lot of things about the systems they run in. This will usually result in a crash or blank screen, even if you have the same machine the software was designed for, any minor upgrade can drive it to fail, and it will always fail at the same point. You may get them to work disabling caches, using tools like Relokick, or downgrading your expansion board with the included software.
2. The disk is permanently damaged. This will usually result in screaming noises from the floppy drive (if its a NODOS disk) or in the case of DOS disks, repeated reports of failing to read a certain block which won't go away with a retry. Nothing to do here but you could try cleaning the surface with alcohol, a process I haven't tried myself yet. Some disks could get spillage from drinks and whatnot which should be removable in this way but I havent had success with this yet.
3. The third and last case is the most frequent in my experience and the one which I actually wanted to talk about. You may not be very familiar with the idea (we always would say that a disk is corrupt as if it was something permanent) as its something that happens mostly to disks that have been stored for long. I assume a fine layer of dust forms on them or something of that sort - haven't investigated the specifics because I'm not much of a scientist.
What matters for my purposes is noticing how these will behave, which is... erratically. The drive will usually make a looping noise similar to a sewing machine, and every time you reboot, the game may crash at a different points in the loading process. DOS disks will report errors in different blocks and sometimes Retrying the reading of these will do away with the error.
What these sort of disks need to work again is simply to be READ, block by block, one or two times, which seems to do away with the "dust particles" or whatever it is that causes the errors. You could let them load until the point they failed last time until they work, but this is a slow process and it won't always work. Instead, clean it all in one go by using some tool which reads the disk such as a disk imager (DMS, DiskMimic....) - personally I found Disksalv in Check mode to work best as it does several passes - and let it run.
If your disk is not actually physically damaged, and in most cases it won't, this will make it work again. This has restored about three quarters of the faulty disks in the collection.
I wonder if anyone has tried more thorough and complex cleaning to revive a floppy disk and what are your experiences.
Statistics: Posted by Wavemaker — Tue Apr 08, 2025 3:47 pm — Replies 2 — Views 112