PC destroys floppys

[chrisosullivan1]

I have 8 or 9 PC's out of 31 that damage floppy disks.
These PC's are identical because I ghosted them. I put a brand new disk in the drive and it works fine. I saved a .doc file on it. I log off and log back in and now the disk says that it is not formatted or the contents are there but I cannot open it. I tried many disks after that and they do not work. The funny thing is that a few hours later, I try it again and the drive works fine. Only the initial disk will never work. (I even tried it on other PC's)
Some days it's fine and other days it's not.
What can this problem be?
It's driving me nuts!

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,
Sounds like a hardware problem..Are those PCs rebuilt or new?

A loose connector or a bad head could cause those kinds of errors..

 

[joemck2004]

Sounds like the drive's dirty. Either pick up a 3-1/2" disk drive cleaning kit or a canned air type thing.

It also seems to me that the disks are made cheaped nowadays. I have a box of old 5-1/4" disks that have been in use for well over a decade and they still work great, despite a few bad sectors now and then. Now I buy 3-1/2" disks and the bad sectors start popping up within a year, and always right in the middle of the most important file on the disk. Now I almost exclusively use a USB flash drive.

 

[tf1]

This probably has nothing to do with the floppy drives. The problem is that you should NEVER save or open Word documents from a floppy drive or any other removable media (but floppies are worse). Why not?

Word has a complex save procedure where is builds a save by writing repetitively to a temp file in the target folder; eventually is writes the final save and deletes the temp file. On a floppy, there is often insufficient space for the temp file and the saved file, plus the floppy is so slow, Word thinks the disk is missing and the file becomes corrupt.

Always save to the local HDD first and then copy to the floppy. Vice versa when opening too.

Regards: tf1

 

[fandabbydosey]

floppy drive is bust, I had the same happen to me.

 

[paul172]

We had the same problem happen to us. We were imaging 30 odd brand new Compaq PC's, around 4 or 5 floppy drives appeared to eat floppy disks for fun. We just put it down to faulty hardware.

 

[bcastner]

Are you using pre-formatted disks, or disk formatted on pre-XP workstations?

XP demands a media ID byte and your disks are not providing them:

http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...port/kb/articles/q140/0/60.asp&NoWebContent=1

 

[chrisosullivan1]

mixed why?

 

[linney]

Very Strange... Floppy not readable in XP????
thread779-453058

140060 - Error Accessing Floppy Disks Using Windows NT

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;140060&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

 

[chriseubank]

Solution:

Step 1 - Toss the floppy drive, they don't make them like they used to. (or melt it down and make something useful)

Step 2 - Buy a good sized USB key, they are far better.

Optional:

Step 3 - Buy a CD burner for sending files that you used to send on a floppy disk.

HTH

C