Floppy Disk

[Guest]

I've upgraded to XP from 98 plus and my floppy disk drive won't read my old disks
What's up with that?

 

[JAX]

There are many people posting with floppy problems after going to XP. I have
tried all the, would be, solutions in vain. It seems, there are a blessed
few who have no problem with floppies, who knows why?

Anyway, your best bet seems to be, find a non XP machine. Load the contents
of your floppies to that machine and e-mail it to your XP machine as an
attachment.

LOL, JAX

 

[Kenny]

Not sure of the details but it's something to do with 3 mode floppy drivers.
Maybe someone more knowledgable could explain it because I and others I know
have had the same problem. One suggested solution was to install these 3
mode drivers but I don't know where to get them!

 

[JAX]

I read something about that. From what I recall that is only used in Japan.
Not sure, I'll go back and see if I can find more information. I am using
the native XP drivers and have tried at least 3 different FD's. I thought I
had it under control until I tried to use a floppy that had been formatted
on this machine and written to. I had used it a few times before and, all of
a sudden, XP tells me the floppy isn't formatted. Go figure?

JAX

 

[JAX]

Kenny,

I checked. 3 mode is a USB drive that supports 1.44 Mb, 1.2 Mb and 720 Kb
floppies. It doesn't seem to be anything that would help.

JAX

 

[E.P. van Westendorp]

See: http://tinylink.com/?RgSOZ3puNH

 

[Jim Macklin]

Old disks do fail from age, that could be part of the
problem...floppies do not make good back-ups.

The tolerances between machines (floppy drives) can make a
difference. The position on a track is mechanical, subject
to + and - tolerances. If the one drive was on the limit of
the minus range and the new drive was on the plus range, the
track might not be seen by the head. I remember years ago
reading that the size of the drive head was reduced when
they went from 360 KB to 1.2 MB and 720 to 1.44 drives in
order that the newer drives would not have the read/write
head spanning two adjacent tracks.


| I've upgraded to XP from 98 plus and my floppy disk drive
won't read my old disks.
| What's up with that?

 

[JAX]

Hello E. P.,

Thanks for the information. I downloaded the driver and copied the
instructions for installing it. I'll give it a shot.

I wonder why nobody else seems to have any real answers for the problems
posters have with floppies on this and other XP groups.

Cheers, JAX

 

[E.P. van Westendorp]

Hi JAX,
I wonder too.
That many people having a problem with floppies in Windows XP even when
the same hardware and floppy works on the same computer in another O/S.
I doubt the downloaded driver is the cure, I didn't see many positive
stories about that.
Success, Eric

 

[JAX]

E.P.,

I installed the driver, we'll see. The instructions that were given in that
article were much longer than need be. After looking at the situation, it
only takes about 4 steps.

Unfortunately, I threw away all my floppies and will have to go buy more.
After that, it will take some time to find out for sure. It looked for a
while that I was over the floppy woes and then my system rejected a floppy
that was formatted on this machine and used several times.

The floppy issue is important to me because I have a lot of money tied up in
a camera that uses them. Yes, I know it is outdated now but, I can't see
replacing it just because XP says so.

Best, JAX

 

[E.P. van Westendorp]

Although I don't have a problem with floppies in XP myself I'm
interested and read all messages about this with interest for a long time.
I think many people like to know you had success or not.
See you, Eric

 

[JAX]

I have, pretty much, come to the conclusion that there is some difference in
the XP install disks that cause some people to have a problem and others
not. As you say, you don't, I do.

JAX

 

[Michael]

I have twice succeeded (two different machines) in solving this issue of Xp
not able to read floppies. Here goes:

I unscrewed the floppy drive from the casing and moved it away from the hard
drive - in that position Xp was able to access the floppies. After that if I
put the floppy drive back into proper position to secure it, the floppies
cannot be read. In the end I had to use the trial and error method to find
the best position to secure the floppy drive before it could work. I found
that it will always work if I have the floppy drive far away from the hard
drive - but that is impractical and untidy with all the wires hanging
around.

My theory is that some sort of electrical interference is causing the floppy
drive head to read the data wrongly. But I've been laughed at.

Mike

 

[Unknown]

Very good diagnosis and trouble shooting technique. Could (besides electrical
interferrence) be magnetic interferrence.

 

[Nick Burns]

I just tried the above on my father in laws machine he does a lot of 98 to
xp on floppy and has had all the floppy problems ever described. But they
are fixed now, and I can't seem to break it yet. Later on and thanks very
much for all your head banging. Later on.

 

[Nick Burns]

That is all true, but not for the thousands of people that have this
problem.

 

[Sharon F]

That is all true, but not for the thousands of people that have this
problem.

When WinME was released the same problem seemed to be more prevalent. In
*most* cases, formatting the floppies on the target machine then taking
them to the machine that you want to transfer data from will help.

Personally, I think that the quality of floppy drives has dropped along
with the prices. Large variance in head alignment exists and can cause a
lot of frustration when trying to transfer files via floppy disk.

 

[Nick Burns]

This link has the fix.

http://groups.google.com/[email protected]&rnum=1