Preserving a Floppy Disk (AMIGA)

[H360]

Hi. I went through my garage, and I found a whole box full of Amiga floppies. They were in a sealed tub. Not airtight.

Trouble is, when I move the metal slider over, the floppy disks show what seems to be mould growth.

Most, if not all of them, have like a white cloud texture to it with a star shaped or mould growth shape of white paste.

I tried a few of them, and they do not work. I had to actually clean my floppy drives head because it built up on it.

I try to clean the floppy's but it does not come off. Some are improved, but some are just gone...

Some of them, also seem to just break at the spindle. IE: metal plate falls off as the glue is gone.


I have some extremely rare discs on five and a quarter floppies and three and a half floppies for the Amiga.
I am talking the official development kit from commodore themselves, boxed 'as new' AEGIS Paint and Paint Deluxe software and sealed C development floppies.


Question is, how do I prevent this cloudy texture and keep them in perfect condition?


Also, does the magnetisation or sectors of the floppies dissipate?

I need to get a HDD in my A500... hmm... FPGA? :rolleyes:


Thanks

[KH2K4]

Sounds like damp rot. If they won't read properly in the floppy drive it's best just to rip the metal plates off completly, I've had a few floppys like that myself that won't read properly with the metal plates on, it won't pull accross the metal catch / spring in the drive to read the floppy.

[APE]

The magnetization can dissipate with time for various reasons, mainly because of being read over and over and over again.

Running them near magnetic fields will do it extremely well.

[karsten]

the only way is dumping :/

and using one of those floppy to sd card adapters

[Chilly Willy]

The magnetic layer on the surface of the disk can oxidize. Said oxide layer eventually flakes off and takes the magnetization with it. This also commonly occurs to video tapes as well. On videos, the higher the frequency, the less the magnetization penetrates the magnetic layer, so losing the surface removes details from the video. With digital signals like a floppy, losing the higher frequencies increases the chance that the signal cannot be decoded, so you get disk read errors.

There is no way to effectively prevent this, which is why groups like CAPS exist. CAPS (the Classic Amiga Preservation Society) is now SPS, the Software Preservation Society.

http://www.softpres.org/

If you check out that site, you'll find a lot of good info on preserving disks, and what can happen to disks over time. They have a nice format for preserving disk images at a VERY low level.

[Cyantist]

If theres mould you need to quarantine the infected so as to stop spread.. I asked about mould on tapes a while ago and the general consesus was they needed chucking.

[Decapicitated]

If theres mould you need to quarantine the infected so as to stop spread.. I asked about mould on tapes a while ago and the general consesus was they needed chucking.
lmfao :lol:

[H360]

they needed chucking.

I hope you mean recycling :flamethrower:



Thanks for all the suggestions. There is only 1 SD card system for the Amiga 500 and it is around $120.

[karsten]

IIRC they were around for far less? they were selling similar adapters for the internal HD too...

[Hellcat]

Well, you don't really *need* an SD adaptor anyways.

Why not just copy the working disks back on fresh ones, or dump them into .ADFs and store them somewhere?