Floppy drive problems

I'm having problems with my floppy drive. I have two disks that I use occasionally for backing up. One disk has some Word files and the other I use to back up some Microsoft Money files. When I try to access either disk, I get a message saying Disk is not Formatted. I pulled out an old disk that had some Word files on it and was able to open those files. I thought maybe the first two disks were just bad, so I tried to reformat the disk that had the files I could open, but I couldn't reformat the disk. I have a program that came with the computer called PC Doctor. I ran a floppy disk drive test with it. It failed the Floppy Drive Random Seek test, with an error code of 3311-202, whatever that means. It passed the Floppy Drive Pattern test. Any suggestions will be appreciated.

 

I think it likely the floppy drive is faulty. They are very cheap and easy to replace, so I'd suggest you do that. The only thing to be careful with is that you put the ribbon cable in the right way round, so take a note of which way round it is when you take it out of the old drive, and be sure to put it into the new one with the same orientation.

 

Floppy disk media will break down after while. If the disks are getting old, get a new one and try it.

You can get a floppy drive head cleaner, handy to have for these occasions, but they don't perform miracles.

Another try, remove the floppy disk controller in Device Manager and let Windows redetect on reboot.

Check (reseat) the cables to the drive.

Matt

 

If you're desperate to get files off a Floppy disk that won't work under XP. Find a PC running say, Windows 95. You may find that the disk is readable on an older OS. Don't ask me why this is so! But I have seen it work on more than a couple of occasions.

 

Sorry for taking so long to post, but I kept forgetting to buy a box of new floppy disks. I did so, and everything seems to work fine now. So, I guess the problem was with the old floppies. There wasn't anything on those that I didn't have on the hard drive. I was just using the floppies to back up a couple of things. Thanks for the advice.

 

Modern storage

You've got a fairly new computer, so invest in a DVD-RW drive - they're well under $100 online and take both CDs and DVDs, which properly cared for, i.e. kept from bright light and abrasion, will last years. some say 100 years.