- ! How to clean a dirty/mouldy disk ! -

[ItsTheSmell]

If a disk is noisy, can they be lubricated with a polish or silicon, or are they dead? I've tried using IPA but they're still noisy after it.

[Jope]

I wouldn't add any lubricants of my own there. Just give it enough treatment that you can get a successful read and write the image to a working floppy.

[jotd]

I have a big stock of original game floppies with labels or even direct prints on it.

I've cleaned them all with the 3D printed tool and some 70% ethanol. Also cleaned the heads of the disk drive I'm using, and I must say it worked to an extent.

Some floppies, though, are in really bad condition. I mean the outside is really neat, but either they make a grinding sound, or some sectors are bad (and can't be rewritten, I've tried that too). One thing that happened too is that the metal spinner detached from the magnetic surface!

I was contemplating replacing the inside of the disks by insides that really work. I still have non-original floppies that work perfectly, then rewrite the original data using adf2disk or a warper like MFMWarp or WWarp (I don't have Kryoflux but a lot of protected games can be duplicated without losing any information)

But it seems very difficult to open a floppy without breaking it. The shutter alone is a pain. And it seems that the floppy case break easily. The video Dennis posted is no longer available. Maybe it was mentionning that aspect too.

[Sasuke]

What would IPA be?

[demoniac]

IPA - isopropyl alchol

[ElectroBlaster]

The pita joy of trying to clean rotten floppy disks!

My best win was with an Atari ST clock cartridge util disk, from what I gleamed from google the disk was non-existent anywhere. So I was determined to image it.

I had to wash the inner magnetic part with detergent, white spirit, then wash again then wiped down with iso.
I used FLOImg and read the disk over and over many times until I managed to get a perfect image.

I was going to ask, if a disk "screams" when spinning, is that because of the surface being contaminated? I cleaned one such disk and it still makes terrible noises. So I was going to try again and put the inner into a clean outer shell.

[Jope]

If it screams, it's usually surface contaminants. Be really careful with drives that you read with screaming disks, as the heads might catch debris and start scratching the disk you're reading and any future disks.

It's always a good idea to have some sacrificial (but fully known working) disks handy that you can read as a sanity check and also to see whether the drive starts scratching disks.

[HardyTC]

Video is not working... could You reupload, please?

[stx2199]

Cleaning a dirty floppy disk is as easy as removing the disk from the plastic, wiping it outside with alcohol and putting it back clean

The problem is when it is scratched, those sectors will not be corrected with cleaning

[RichL]

Tips / guides on getting the disk out of the plastic case without it snapping or breaking?

[Jope]

Open two corners of the plastic case, stretch the case open, shake the disk out onto a micro fiber cloth.

Since I have a ton of disks that didn't format without errors, I'll demonstrate:
http://jope.fi/amiga/diskout/

I didn't have to shake much for the platter to fall out.

I used a box cutter to open the rear corners and slice the back of the sticker. Some disk casings are very resilient, this one was a brittle one and the corners just cracked open with a little twist.

[RichL]

Thank you. Off to practice now.

[RichL]

Well, I broke my first one, it wont click back together lol.

[Jope]

Yes, basically the expectation here should be that the disk is being cracked open for one last resort cleaning/reading session. Then you can write the resulting image to a fresh disk.

Mold ruins the disks and the soft liner inside the disk case.