Magnetic media and mold cleanup

From: Douglas Quebbeman <dhquebbeman_at_theestopinalgroup.com>
Date: Tue Feb 26 10:21:31 2002

> Jerome Fine replies:
>
> "donor" diskette? Are we now harvesting computer parts?

I never had good luck cleaning the plastic shell of a 3.5 inch
diskette; most of them have a thin liner materials inside, a
type of plasticized frabric, that would disintegrate. So you
want to use a blank, new, or otherwise unused floppy from which
you remove the media and toss it. You insert the cleaned media
into that plastic diskette shell.

This is a very trivial operation, unless you're challenged in
the hand/eye coordination department...
 
> The person I am doing the recovery for may already have
> enough of the files. I will see how much further I should go.
>
> > > I have one floppy that has over 100 error blocks (can't be read)
> > > out of 988. Others have just a few. Is it possible to only spot clean
> > > the ones with a few errors without removing the jacket?
> > Dunno- let us know!
>
> Likewise for the answer above.

Ok, again, perhaps we're having a communication problem.

I have never tried anything other than what I described. Remove
the messed-up media from its original shell and put it in a
clean one. Clean the whole thing. This is what I've done,
and your suggestion of partial cleaning has never occurred to
me. And on reflection, I can't see any purpose in it.

Unless you're reading into this some difficulty that isn't
there.
 
> > > Will Formula 409 work with floppy media? Where can it be purchased?
> > Oh, it's a common household cleaner here in the U.S... a
> > comparable cleaner is Fantastik.
>
> We have Fantastik here in Canada. I am in Toronto. Windex
> is also a grease dissolving fluid and is used for glass. How
> might that do?

I would not make a recommendation regarding something I've
not only never tried, but never even considered trying.

Sorry!

> >Joe wrote:
> >If you just want to be able to read it long enough to recover it's data
> >then don't put it back in a jacket! Just put the bare disk into the drive
> >and copy it. I know several people that have successfully done this with 5
> >1/4" disk. However if your dirve has a spring loaded ejector, you may need
> >to open up the housing and push the ejector back by hand.
>
> I will try that also if I go that far.

for 5.25 inch floppies, I've done that too, but even still,
it's easier to use a donor sleeve than trying to get naked
media into the drive IMHO, although YYMV, etc.

-dq
Received on Tue Feb 26 2002 - 10:21:31 GMT