On 2024-09-14, scole <vintageapplemac@gmail.com> wrote:

Well, it's been a few months since I posted to the group asking how to restore "dead" floppies, and one tip* that was given was to use
isopropyl alcohol.

I've not had these old Macs booted since I read that message, been
hellish busy, but I just fired up my Performa 5320, applied some
alcohol to my Civilization floppies that had hitherto resolutely
refused to be read, et voila! The discs all mounted!

It took a few attempts, actually, maybe 4 or 5 applications of alocohol
to each disk before each finally mounted. I was able to back-up each
floppy to hard disk, too.

A great result! I intend to work through my entire collection of
big-box floppy games. :)

I have ditched a lot of disks over the years that refused to mount.
Damn shame, as if I knew this trick I could probably have salvaged a
lot of them. PD, newsletter/user groups stuff, magazine cover disks,
all lost, like tears in rain. :(

Anyway, massive gratitude to Mr Finnigan for the tip!

*I cannot reply to the post where the tip was given, as it seems
Eternal September has suffered a catastrophic failure and lost all
messages older than a couple of months. I hope Ray Banana gets them
back!

Thanks for reporting back. 🙂👍🏼

--
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

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In article <140920240727420035%vintageapplemac@gmail.com>,
scole <vintageapplemac@gmail.com> wrote:

Well, it's been a few months since I posted to the group asking how to restore "dead" floppies, and one tip* that was given was to use
isopropyl alcohol.

I've not had these old Macs booted since I read that message, been
hellish busy, but I just fired up my Performa 5320, applied some
alcohol to my Civilization floppies that had hitherto resolutely
refused to be read, et voila! The discs all mounted!

It took a few attempts, actually, maybe 4 or 5 applications of alocohol
to each disk before each finally mounted. I was able to back-up each
floppy to hard disk, too.

A great result! I intend to work through my entire collection of
big-box floppy games. :)

I have ditched a lot of disks over the years that refused to mount.
Damn shame, as if I knew this trick I could probably have salvaged a
lot of them. PD, newsletter/user groups stuff, magazine cover disks,
all lost, like tears in rain. :(

Anyway, massive gratitude to Mr Finnigan for the tip!

*I cannot reply to the post where the tip was given, as it seems
Eternal September has suffered a catastrophic failure and lost all
messages older than a couple of months. I hope Ray Banana gets them
back!

That's great news! And sorry to hear about the other floppies you threw away - I
also tended to do that, though mostly with old blanks that initialization. Will try the isopropyl alcohol next time. Since they're not making them anymore, I feel really bad about throwing floppies away ... even though I have enough to last until I'm 100 I think :-)

Could you please take a moment and check which of your floppies have been preserved on macintoshgarden.org already? You might have something not archived yet that we run in danger of losing forever otherwise ...

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in article 140920240727420035%vintageapplemac@gmail.com, scole at vintageapplemac@gmail.com wrote on 9/14/24 12:27 AM:

Well, it's been a few months since I posted to the group asking how to restore
"dead" floppies, and one tip* that was given was to use isopropyl alcohol.

Sorry to reply so late, but does this involve swabbing the disk with alcohol
or somehow soaking its dust catcher? I happen to have the opposite problem: almost all of my disks are now unwritable!

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On 2025-03-30 22:23:10 +0000, Mr. Business said:

in article 140920240727420035%vintageapplemac@gmail.com, scole at vintageapplemac@gmail.com wrote on 9/14/24 12:27 AM:

Well, it's been a few months since I posted to the group asking how to
restore "dead" floppies, and one tip* that was given was to use
isopropyl alcohol.

Sorry to reply so late, but does this involve swabbing the disk with alcohol or somehow soaking its dust catcher? I happen to have the opposite problem: almost all of my disks are now unwritable!

More likely that's the drive. Perhaps the drive heads need cleaning
and/or re-alignment. If it's an external drive then simply it might not
be getting enough power (especially USB-powered drives - a different
USB port and/or double USB cable might help).

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