floppy drive/controller failure? - pls help

[astaroth]

hi all..

looking for some clues regarding an old floppy drive, maybe controller, that has seemingly gone bad in past few days after many years of stable performance. don't know the make/model off hand, but i pulled it from (another) old machine..

win2k, p166, 64 megs. older machine set up as file/print server. just a few days ago, i successfully ran ghost 6.03 from it - boot to dos from floppy, run ghost from dos, etc. everything okay. two days later, i am wanting to run multicast server from it and was in the process of creating boot discs for the other machines on the network... and drive failure. i have workarounds for ghost, so that's not an issue (yet).

details on the failed floppy drive
1) cannot read discs that are good on other machines
2) responds with "disc not formatted error" on good discs
3) ok, i attempt format and get "windows unable to complete format"
4) removed floppy and controller and reboot machine
5) finds floppy and controller, same situation as above
6) drive enabled in bios - no settings have changed
7) cable connection is sound - pulled out and reconnected to confirm

tonight i am going to swap out this floppy with a good floppy drive. try to isolate controller. if it works, i get a new floppy and all is good. it it doesn't, the controller died and i am screwed..

anyone have floppy drives / controllers just die? i have not and am curious and looking for other factors and all..

thx in advance..

 

[tristan]

try to swap cables first. yeah, floppies can die just like that... and so are the rest of them...
you must have misaligned it somehow... good thing that they are relatively cheap.

 

[nnnyyy]

I got the same errors before and my problem was a bad floppy.

 

[Schlocemus]

Either floppy drive or floppy cable can go bad abruptly. However, note that almost all floppie cables are "keyed" with some of the older floppy drives, they are physically keyed with a piece of plastic so you cannot put them in incorrectly to the motherboard. If this is the case, go out and grab yourself a new floppy drive, but don't spend much more than $15

 

[Doctorweir]

Maybe the read and write heads are just too dirty and have to be cleaned, respectively the drive should be replaced...?

 

[astaroth]

ok, swapped cables and same problem. however, i removed drive and controller from device manager, rebooted and left the drive hanging by its cables (relatively vertical) and upon reboot, i could hit a good floppy disc. so i power down, and remount the drive to its bay (horizontal) and same read-problems re-emerge..

and it's not a connection issue, i was able to get it working again in the suspended-by-cables position afterwards. so i am gonna chase down a cheap floppy drive. still, any ideas on what this would be and what would cause it? if it needs cleaning, why would vertical be alright?

thx again..

 

[tristan]

mis-alignment of the head. somehow tilting it verticaly aligns it...

unless u can have it fix for free, better buy a new one.

good troubleshooting though!