I have a lot of problem with floppies (3.5 inch). After a short use it gets unreadable. On trying to repair through Norton Disk Doctor or trying to reformat it it shows Zero Track Bad. Is there a method to overcome, repair such problems.Due to this I cannot take reliable backups.
This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.
Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.
If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.
Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.
Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.
Access the answers to your technology questions today.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.
Try it out and discover for yourself.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.
This could be due to several problems:
* cheap/bad floppy discs
* wrong type of discs
* a dirty or failing floppy drive
How old is the drive... has it ever been cleaned... has it ever worked correctly (is this a new problem)? If this is a new problem, I'd guess that the drive is dirty/bad, and would seriously consider replacing it. They're inexpensive, and your data is at risk if you can't rely on the floppies.
Good luck!
I have tried on a whole range of Floppy Drives (in my work place) but the problem does not seem to be of the drive. The brand of floppies is usually Sony or Maxell. I believe they are reputed brands.
What I am looking for is how to make the floppy with a zero track bad usable. In olden days when 386 were popular there was a feature called Low Level Formatting. This used to solve similar problems in the earstwhile 5 1/4 floppies. Is there a similar solution for the 3 1/2 foppy. The Disk Doctor also states that low level formatting can solve the problem. I do not know how to perform it.
Thanx for the reply
I get the same error on the other drives too and the floppy is almost new. In fact I bought 5 boxes of Sony Floppy disks and out of them around 10 showed zero track bad even when they were almost new, just been used for 2 -3 times.
The floppy drive I have is around 8 months old but the same error is given with new floppy drives
certainly there is some virus in the harddiks and you need to try changing hard disk and using new floppies which you have not yet tried on this floppy drive. You must format your hard disk and all the floppies otherwise there is no chance of problem solving as i am seeing from the comments of other people also.
Business Accounts
Answer for Membership
by: matthPosted on 1999-09-12 at 03:56:18ID: 2040146
Are the floppies you are using brand new?
Are they a good brand?
Is the floppy drive quite old?
It could that your floppy drive is old and needs a clean or if you have children check to make sure they havent shoved something inside the drive itself. You may end up having to take it out of the machine and taking of the casing to look.
Floppy drives are very cheap so I would buy a new one, they aren't really worth having fixed.
Matth