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From: engelhardt@edinboro.edu (Rick Engelhardt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Problems with IBM 30-286 floppy drives
Message-ID: <1659@edinboro.edu>
Date: 29 Jun 90 12:04:54 GMT
Organization: Edinboro University of Pennsylvania
Lines: 42


        We are experiencing an unusually high number of problems with 
diskette damage in conjunction with the use of IBM model 30-286s.  We 
run many IBM model 30-286s (an estimated 80 - 100 all together) on our 
campus in offices and in labs open for use by the general University 
population.  Diskettes become unreadable after a relatively short time 
(less than a month of light use).  A hardware technician told me that 
it isn't an adjustment problem (e.g. - it's not misaligned drive heads 
causing the problem) because there isn't anything to adjust; everything 
is preset at the factory.  He theorized that it may be physical 
diskette damage due to the inherent design of floppy drives; the top 
drive head is on a movable arm and could conceivably "crash" on a 
diskette and scratch it.  I have examined several diskettes and have 
found scratches in a concentric circular pattern on a small number, but 
many of them haven't been physically damaged at all.  I have been able 
to salvage a few diskettes recently with the PC Tools DISKFIX utility; 
it has a "revitalize disk" option which examines a disk and rewrites 
the address marks on it.  Most of these disks had lost clusters and/or 
cross-linked clusters on them when checked.  The floppy drives of many 
of these machines have been checked with the testing software included 
with the model 30-286; the software reports no problems found with the 
drives.  Although it is relatively impossible to tell which machines 
in our open labs are causing the problems (students move from machine 
to machine frequently, and tracing the problem to specific machines has 
been difficult to do with any reliability), we have identified a couple 
of office machines that give far more problems than others do.  The 
problems have been intermittent but reoccur frequently.  Both high 
quality diskettes (e.g. - Sony) and generic 1.44 MB diskettes have been 
used, so media quality doesn't seem to factor into the problem.  I can 
come up with no clear reason as to why the problem is occurring.

        Has anyone else been experiencing similar problems?  Can anyone 
suggest causes for these problems and/or courses of action?  Please let 
me know via mail; if there is interest in this, I will summarize the 
answers and post the summary to the net.  Thanks all in advance for your
assistance!

Rick Engelhardt
Academic Computing, Computer Center, Edinboro University of PA

Internet: ENGELHARDT@EDINBORO.EDU
Voice: (814)732-2931