Why flopy diskettes work only for 2 or 3 times? Then they got corrupted?

Answer 1

Floppy diskettes are usually more reliable. However, because they are an old way of storing data usually the drives and the floppy media are older. Your problem is probably due to a combination of both. Drives over time can become misaligned and read and write corrupted data in the wrong sectors on the media. The media often degrades over time and may or may not hold the magnetic information. I am not sure how long the media actually lasts, but most disks were manufactured years ago and if you see them on the shelves of stores they have probably been sitting there for a long time.

I have found that my disks and drives are all in this condition. I have since gone on to transferring any old data to CD-R's and or flash drives. CD-R's will eventually degrade and the drives will become obsolete in about 5-10 years depending on were the computer industry decides to go - flash media, high capacity DVD's, networking hard drives, etc. Your guess is good as mine.

Answer 2

First off, some questions; does the disk read in other machines and only fail in your machine? Do disks made by other people fail quickly or is it just disks you have made? I have a vintage original IBM PC from 1984 which boots from a floppy. It has NO hard disk, but it does have 2 CDROM drives which are shared as well as the original two 5-1/4" floppies. It has been running from the same boot floppy for years and rebooted thousands of times. I have physically worn out the media in a floppy. It sits on my network as a dedicated print server and at the same time, monitoring the workings of my wood stove to control the dampers. If your floppy is failing to read after only a few times, I would first suspect dirt on the heads. Get a head cleaning diskette. They come in both 5-1/4" and 3-1/2" and are a fiber disk in place of the magnetic media on which you put a few drops of a liquid head cleaner, then pop it into the drive. The boot sector is located at the outermost track of the media. Anyway, try a simple cleaning and see what happens. Dirt is the most frequent cause of failure to write or read. Or, the drive itself may be damaged. You may have a virus as someone else suggested. It won't hurt to locate and run a virus/spyware/adware scanner. I use Spybot - Search and Destroy, from Safer-Networking. Do a web search for Spybot and you will find their site. The price is right, absolutely free. Your only cost is the time to download and run the software package. I can't believe the answer from someone else of getting a flash drive. That would not be a solution I could use. NONE of my computers can boot from a flash drive and only 2 have a USB port, but ALL have a floppy, and ALL have the capability to boot from the floppy. I backup my data (things like letters I've written and such) on floppies. Check for magnets in the area where you keep your disks. I once had a customer who had a pen with a highly magnetized clip which if put on a floppy could corrupt files and I know a customer service guy who actually saw a floppy on a refrigerator held up by a magnet! By the way, I found the magnetized pen clip by simply using a compass and moving it around the area and when I got it near the desktop, the needle swung and pointed away from north. It was easy to track it to the pen from there. My compass responded to the magnetic field from the clip about 18-20" away. Still, I lean toward the dirty heads in the drive as most likely. I really can NOT believe the stupid answers some people give. Floppies are MORE reliable than hard disk drives and just because they are a few years old does NOT mean they "forget" stuff because of old age! My IBM PC has been old enough to vote for a number of years and it has yet to fail me, except for dirt on the heads, of course. Last thing, fingetprints. This is not a problem with 3-1/2" because of the shutter which covers the media, but it IS in the 5-1/4" where the slot is open. I stand by my experience and 24 year old equipment which works as well today as it did when brand new in 1984.

Answer 3

Aside from the previous answers, floppy disks can and have been used as primary storage for systems over years of use. I got in the business with the Apple II and designed business systems that had data disks written to the same floppy several dozen times a day for a month, at which time we swapped them out for safety sake. I have gone back a read old Apple II and IBM PC floppies that were written in the 80's.
The most likely problem is that the drive heads are dirty and are not writing a good signal to the disk and then are having to read the weak signal through dirty heads. Get a disk drive cleaning kit and clean the drive heads following the directions, but not as often as they say. Once a month is enough.

Answer 4

No, it's not that. That always happen to people. diskettes don't have much stealth in data storage and protection. Lossy data will occur when diskettes are exposed. The files are surely not corrupted, bu the thin layer of disk can be damaged easily.

Answer 5

This is not generally the case. There is probably some sort of primitive virus on the computer you're using, and the software didn't know to look for it. Either that, or the disk itself has the virus on it. Could be the 25-year-old Stoned virus, for all we know.

Bring up your virus-protection software, stick in your disk, and ask the software to check that particular disk. You're probably re-infecting the machine every time you use it.

Answer 6

Happened to me all the time. Try switching to flash drives, if you're on fairly modern computers. That's all the help I can give.