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From: djbpitt@unix.cis.pitt.edu (David J Birnbaum)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Spurious "Disk is Write Protected"
Message-ID: <103405@unix.cis.pitt.edu>
Date: 15 Mar 91 01:08:20 GMT
Reply-To: djbpitt@unix.cis.pitt.edu (David J Birnbaum)
Organization: Univ. of Pittsburgh, Comp & Info Sys
Lines: 28

My 5-1/4" 1.2M floppy drive has been refusing to write to diskettes,
telling me that the "Disk is Write Protected."  This problem began some
six months ago and was very rare; it has since become extremely
frequent.  In the past, jiggling the diskette a bit would cause the
drive to accept it, but this no longer seems to work.

The drive reads properly and on those rare occasions when it is willing
to write, the files it writes are readable both by the drive in question
and by a drive on another machine.

The diskettes are all high quality and formatted normally.  There is no
visible dust or debris inside the drive in question.

Is this a known problem?  Is it one I can repair by myself and, if so,
how?  Given the bargain basement prices of disk drives, it hardly seems
worth getting it repaired professionally, but if all it needs is some
particular cleaning in some particular place, I'd be grateful if some-
one could let me know.

Thanks,

David

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Professor David J. Birnbaum         djbpitt@vms.cis.pitt.edu [Internet]
The Royal York Apartments, #802     djbpitt@pittvms.bitnet   [Bitnet]
3955 Bigelow Boulevard              voice: 1-412-687-4653
Pittsburgh, PA  15123  USA          fax:   1-412-624-9714