Cannot read any disk in floppy drive

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Well, I did want a floppy in, but she said they put one in, and it failed to
work, so she concluded that floppies were a no-go for my particular motherboard.
Now that my machine is home, the warranty is now in effect. She claims that my
warranty does not allow me to open the case,

UGH! I would never choose to buy a computer where the warranty forbids
me to open the case.

or I would put one in and see for
myself. Since my brother paid for this machine, he refuses to allow me to open
the case till the warranty is run out (about a year).

Understood. If it's his machine, it's his choice.

However, I do know that there is a floppy connector on the motherboard.

If there's a floppy connector on the motherboard. clearly the
motherboard supports floppies. If your system builder couldn't make it
work, that would seem to say something about her system building
skills.

I haven't had such a need since I switched from 9x to XP. With Vista, I have no
such need. It simply no longer exists (at least, it doesn't exist for me. I'm
sure it exists for many others.)

As I said (quoted below) I can't remember the last time I needed one
either. If it were expensive, I would do without one. My point is only
that considering how cheap it is, I want it just in case some need I
haven't thought of comes up.

I would also be much more comfortable with one there.

Now I'm confused. I thought you *didn't* want one, and were arguing
against having one.

 

[Donald L McDaniel]

UGH! I would never choose to buy a computer where the warranty forbids
me to open the case.




Understood. If it's his machine, it's his choice.





If there's a floppy connector on the motherboard. clearly the
motherboard supports floppies. If your system builder couldn't make it
work, that would seem to say something about her system building
skills.




As I said (quoted below) I can't remember the last time I needed one
either. If it were expensive, I would do without one. My point is only
that considering how cheap it is, I want it just in case some need I
haven't thought of comes up.




Now I'm confused. I thought you *didn't* want one, and were arguing
against having one.

Well, that's just me,friend. I'm a 62.5 yr/old confused hippy.

Anyway, it's not so much that I WANT one, I would just feel more comfortable if
one were there (old habits die hard, especially when you're as old as I am.)

I do like the speed of CD/DVD drives over the speed of floppies.
But I went for several years without ever needing to use a floppy, and my
floppies all degraded. I even had them stored in a dust-free container. I
guess they were just cheap disks.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

On Mon, 17 Dec 2007 13:20:00 -0700, "Ken Blake, MVP"


Well, that's just me,friend. I'm a 62.5 yr/old confused hippy.

LOL! OK (but I'm older than you).

 

[Arlykat]

I don't agree. True, floppies are not the most reliable of media. But
that's not to say that all, or even most, floppies are unreadable
after a year or so. I have often successfully read much older
floppies.




And I, on the other hand, have floppy drives in all my machines
(except my laptop) and would choose to have one installed if I bought
a new computer tomorrow.

True, one needs them very seldom these days. But considering that they
can be bought for around $10 US or so, I want one just in case. There
are situations in which they come in very handy, such as loading SATA
drivers.

Until you responded with your 'opinion' on this question, Ken, everyone was
staying on topic in trying to answer this poster's question. Once you
replied you turned the topic into whether or not it is someone's preference
to use a floppy drive. Want to tell you that you are NOT helpful in this
chain of questioning here, nor are most of all the other posters who are now
answering you instead of the original poster and their question. Great.

 

[Onsokumaru]

Until you responded with your 'opinion' on this question, Ken, everyone
was
staying on topic in trying to answer this poster's question. Once you
replied you turned the topic into whether or not it is someone's
preference
to use a floppy drive. Want to tell you that you are NOT helpful in this
chain of questioning here, nor are most of all the other posters who are
now
answering you instead of the original poster and their question. Great.

It's called topic drift.
Seems you are guilty of it too, unless you can tell us how your post is on
topic?
Build a bridge and get over it


I haven't seen the OP, so apologies for repeats.

I have only recently stopped having a floppy drive, but I do keep a couple
around. (I'm assuming 3.5in disks here).

Floppies can lose a sector or two so easily it's not worth the risk any
more, even new floppies.

Often I will find a floppy disk, (remember when they really were floppy
;-)), created in one drive will not be read properly in another.
It always made me slightly apprehensive when doing BIOS upgrades ;-)

About all you can do is use a cleaning diskette. Open the case and check the
connections.

If you have made a BIOS change you may need to set the "swap floppy drives"
option in the BIOS.

Does the drive appear to function normally. Light come on when you try to
access the disk.

It may be the case your drive has simply stopped working. I had one the
other week that made noises, but when I dis-assembled it the read head
wouldn't move back and forth across the disk, but the disk was spinning. I
had another where I found a few pieces of a jigsaw puzzle inside.

 

[Karl K.]

The floppy drive controller is embedded in the Mobo. You may not be able to
use floppies at all on "comp1". Try running a hardware diagnostic on the
floppy drive. If you don't have one already installed try #1-tufftest. Try
it on your working "comp2" first.
Since you cannot access the floppy on "comp1" you cannot test the installed
floppy using that machine, but you could test it by replacing it on "comp2".
Sometimes even a brand new floppy drive could be bad; run the diagnostic
tests after installing it. It is enabled in the Bios isn't it?
http://www.tufftest.com/

When I use "my Computer" I can read a floppyusually, but can't get rid of
the file list when I try to read another floppy. I then get "insert disk " or
" not formatted " messages and sometimes get " unreadable disks. This is not
the way the system had been working. Any ideas?