This isn’t right. The drive I’ve got hooked up to my Kryoflux produced this little marvel today.
Guess there’s not much hope of retrieving whatever it was that was on that disk. Also, I think I’d better disassemble that drive and figure out what’s happening before any more disks are “archived.”
Hi there,
I’m seeing this on my disks too. Not as hardcore as your photos but I see a light ring on my disks. I’ve checked them before using and I don’t have them. Do you think this is due to a problem with the drive or could if be something incorrect parameter in dtc that can cause this?
I’ve tried two different floppy drives and seems to get these rings…
Well, these are serious scrapes, I don’t think there’s anything in the software that would help with this. The problem likely was that the media itself (or, perhaps the media of the disk I did before this one) was degraded to the point that it was coming off as the head passed over it. My hypothesis is that it was accumulating on the drive head and then scraping more off as it’s dragged across the surface. I don’t actually know if the head makes physical contact with the disks normally or if it’s just very close, but I blame this mostly on weak media.
It’s wasn’t that uncommon even back in the day to see some rings, but I’d say probably the best move, particularly if the disks might have gotten dusty or gritty would be to try to wash off the media with alcohol and a Q-tip (and regularly clean off the drive head). My guess is that the rings you’re getting are more like a track through dust, but that’s probably not good either.
I should say, when this masterpiece pictured above was created, the drive was making a terrible screech, it was clear that something bad was happening. I’ve had pretty good success washing off the disks and getting reasonable reads, but it seems like a gamble. I certainly wouldn’t really scrub, just wipe.