3.5" Floppy Drive Cleaning Kits

[BoneSnapDeez]

Anyone have any experience with kits like these?

I need to clean four or so floppy drives.

[Ivo]

Anyone have any experience with kits like these?

I need to clean four or so floppy drives.

Sorry, can't help with you question, but something for you to consider:
do you really need to clean the drives? Floppy disks are not that durable, I think you may be better off using a working drive and getting whatever data you need to get out of the floppies and into some other medium. I did that to a few of mine recently and already could not get some of the files intact.

Ivo.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I'm restoring some old PCs, so yeah, I'd like to get everything nice and clean/functional.

I am well aware that floppies suck, unfortunately. I'm in the process of backing mine up.

[CRTGAMER]

Anyone have any experience with kits like these?

I need to clean four or so floppy drives.

I'm restoring some old PCs, so yeah, I'd like to get everything nice and clean/functional.

I am well aware that floppies suck, unfortunately. I'm in the process of backing mine up.

Looks similiar to tape cleaners, a couple drops of the alcohol and run the media. I think the read head of the drive is more fragile compared to a Cassette or VHS head. However, maybe better then a QTip which might be more intrusive. Either way, good to wait at least a full day for all the solvent to evaporate.

I found that a good way to backup DOS games is to burn the installed files from the hard drive to a CDR. You could go one better and file copy the floppies to hard drive as well to get the original installers, but most would have to be transposed back to floppy for the A drive read.

[Hobie-wan]

I've never used a 3.5 inch cleaning disc before. I did use a 5.25 one on my C64 several times back in the day though. I would go ahead and grab one. If you can, disassemble the drive a bit and use canned air to blow out dust, then use the cleaning disc.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Yeah, I'll definitely disassemble what I can.

One of these computers has a 3.5" floppy drive, 5.25" floppy drive, and cassette drive. It's absolute madness!

[GSZX1337]

Yeah, I'll definitely disassemble what I can.

One of these computers has a 3.5" floppy drive, 5.25" floppy drive, and cassette drive. It's absolute madness!

Wow, that must've been the coolest PC ever back when it was released.

[Ziggy]

Anyone have any experience with kits like these?

I need to clean four or so floppy drives.

You can just buy a brand new drive for less...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6821121001

[BoneSnapDeez]

Yeah, I'll definitely disassemble what I can.

One of these computers has a 3.5" floppy drive, 5.25" floppy drive, and cassette drive. It's absolute madness!

Wow, that must've been the coolest PC ever back when it was released.

Here's a picture of the beast:

You can just buy a brand new drive for less...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6821121001

Unfortunately, I don't think that would work. I'm talking about 15-20 year old computers here.

[Hobie-wan]

Well, that's a tape backup, not cassette. That's a little different.

But yes a new floppy drive would work. The connections for 3.5 and 5.25 disk drives on PCs didn't change at all.