![]() If after removing the dust, the drive still doesn’t want to read or write, I recommend unplugging the computer and removing the floppy drive. Floppy drives tend to accumulate an amazing amount of dust. If you suspect that the heads are just dirty, you can try using a can of spray air to remove any dust from the drive. It’s cheaper and easier to replace the drive than to align the heads. ![]() However, with floppy drives being so cheap, head alignments are a lost art. In the past when floppy drives cost hundreds of dollars, it would be time to get out the oscilloscope and align the heads. If you are able to read the data on that machine but not on any other machine, the drive heads are out of alignment. If the format is successful, write some data to the disk and then remove and reinsert the disk and try to read the disk. To find out which is the case, try to perform a complete format-not a quick format-on a disk. Most of the time when a read/write head has problems, it’s either dirty or out of alignment. This is good news, because these are the only serviceable components in the drive. The vast majority of physical problems with floppy drives have to do with the read/write heads. If a belt has simply come loose, it’s usually easy to slip it back over the disk spindle wheel and the wheel connected to the drive motor.įortunately, motor problems and electrical problems are rare with floppy drives. It’s pretty much impossible to get a replacement belt, although I did once see someone use a rubber band as a spare belt to get them through the night until the computer store opened the next day and they could get a new drive. ![]() If you have either of these symptoms and an older drive, it is possible that a belt that connects a motor to the physical hardware could have broken or come off the track. The read/write head assembly in this floppy drive is connected to the stepper motor via a screw drive shaft. The light proves that the drive is getting power, but the drive motor that spins the disk, shown in Figure A, isn’t working. If you don’t hear the disk spinning when you attempt to access the drive, but the drive’s light comes on, you can be relatively sure you have a motor problem. It’s easy to tell when you have a motor problem. If you have this type of problem, it’s game over: Go buy a new drive. There’s really nothing that can be done from a user’s perspective to repair a dead motor or an electrical problem with the floppy drive’s circuit board. Floppy drives rely on computer-controlled motors to move the disk and drive heads into the correct position to read or write data. Even though floppy drives cost less than 20 dollars these days, they’re still complex pieces of equipment.
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