bad floppies under '9x and XP

At work I use a '95 system to test some hardware, and transfer the logs
of the test to an XP system via floppy. The '95 has a built-in floppy
drive, the XP a USB one.

What I am puzzled about is why a bad floppy sucks away so much in the
way of system resources. Yes, obviously it isn't cost-effective to use
one, so I use a good one, but just on principle, I'd like to know what's
going on:

On the '95 system, if the floppy is bad, the write just fails with an
error message, that isn't a problem. But if I run the (Windows) disc
checking tool under A:'s Properties, it not only runs very slowly - as
I'd expect - but also slows down the response time of anything else the
system is doing, to an incredible extent. Why does the simple task of
checking a floppy for bad sectors hog the processor so much?

On the XP system, if the read fails, it also seems to lock up the
system. I don't know _what_ it is doing: it sits there, not even
accessing the floppy continuously - the light comes on for a few
seconds, then goes off for a few seconds, and eventually - sometimes
after a minute or more - comes up with an error message; again, the
system is a little sluggish to do anything else, though nothing like as
much so as the '95 system. But what is really weird is that it seems to
sulk where the floppy is concerned: once it has decided there is a
problem, it refuses - by going into the
I'll-stop-responding-for-ages-and-then-put-up-an-error-message mode - to
do _anything_ with the floppy, even delete or rename a file, _or use a
(different, good) floppy. Sometimes, if I think it has locked up
completely, I kill the process with Task Manager, which works - XP is
more robust that way - but from the way it does it, it is clearly having
a _major_ effect: it usually closes _all_ explorer windows, blanks and
eventually redraws the taskbar, breaks iconoid, redraws the desktop, and
so on. Again, I can't see why doing something as trivial as accessing a
floppy - even if it's dud - should have such a major effect on the
system. (I also think the XP system is less tolerant of the poor
floppy.)

I repeat, I _know_ a good floppy is only pennies, and I have one: it's
just the principle that bugs me, of why doing such a nominally simple
thing should cripple both systems so much.

(I've included the '98 newsgroup as I thought they might be
interested/have views/answers.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by
ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. -Mark Twain, author and humorist
(1835-1910)

XP is a more complex piece of software than Win 9x, and goes about trying
to read data from a damaged disk differently, and tries more methods in the
attempt. This can result in Explorer locking-up CPU resources for some
time if it does not have any initial success.

If there's any chance a floppy may be compromised, you should not use
Windows Explorer to read the disk - but try instead using a "Window's
Command Prompt" first.

The difference being, if there's not going to be any success in reading the
disk, and you have waited a long time with no success, then all you need do
is press the [Ctrl-C] key combination to discontinue trying to read the
drive.

Also, if you do use Explorer (as I sometimes do, not realising there may be
a problem with a disk) - and find that CPU usage has reached maximum and
no-data is being read from the floppy - then you can always simply close
that instance of Windows Explorer, and the drive-read operation will also
be terminated - then simply just re-open another Explorer - avoiding the
damaged disk again.

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)




"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in message
...
At work I use a '95 system to test some hardware, and transfer the logs
of the test to an XP system via floppy. The '95 has a built-in floppy
drive, the XP a USB one.

What I am puzzled about is why a bad floppy sucks away so much in the way
of system resources. Yes, obviously it isn't cost-effective to use one,
so I use a good one, but just on principle, I'd like to know what's going
on:

On the '95 system, if the floppy is bad, the write just fails with an
error message, that isn't a problem. But if I run the (Windows) disc
checking tool under A:'s Properties, it not only runs very slowly - as
I'd expect - but also slows down the response time of anything else the
system is doing, to an incredible extent. Why does the simple task of
checking a floppy for bad sectors hog the processor so much?

On the XP system, if the read fails, it also seems to lock up the system.
I don't know _what_ it is doing: it sits there, not even accessing the
floppy continuously - the light comes on for a few seconds, then goes off
for a few seconds, and eventually - sometimes after a minute or more -
comes up with an error message; again, the system is a little sluggish to
do anything else, though nothing like as much so as the '95 system. But
what is really weird is that it seems to sulk where the floppy is
concerned: once it has decided there is a problem, it refuses - by going
into the I'll-stop-responding-for-ages-and-then-put-up-an-error-message
mode - to do _anything_ with the floppy, even delete or rename a file,
_or use a (different, good) floppy. Sometimes, if I think it has locked
up completely, I kill the process with Task Manager, which works - XP is
more robust that way - but from the way it does it, it is clearly having
a _major_ effect: it usually closes _all_ explorer windows, blanks and
eventually redraws the taskbar, breaks iconoid, redraws the desktop, and
so on. Again, I can't see why doing something as trivial as accessing a
floppy - even if it's dud - should have such a major effect on the
system. (I also think the XP system is less tolerant of the poor floppy.)

I repeat, I _know_ a good floppy is only pennies, and I have one: it's
just the principle that bugs me, of why doing such a nominally simple
thing should cripple both systems so much.

(I've included the '98 newsgroup as I thought they might be
interested/have views/answers.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985
MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed
by
ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. -Mark Twain, author and humorist
(1835-1910)

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in
:

On the '95 system, if the floppy is bad, the write just fails with an
error message, that isn't a problem. But if I run the (Windows) disc
checking tool under A:'s Properties, it not only runs very slowly - as
I'd expect - but also slows down the response time of anything else the
system is doing, to an incredible extent. Why does the simple task of
checking a floppy for bad sectors hog the processor so much?


Is it really the CPU time it's hogging? (Check in a good task manager..) It
might be the low level driver waiting and timing out and retrying that takes
all the time. Other parts of the system often have to wait for low level
driver accesses to complete, the same sort of thing shows up with browsers
trying to get remote data, etc.

One thing I read about bad floppies, is that it's worth just letting it retry
up to 100 times overnight if need be, that it usually gets a read in the end
if there's no scarring of the disk surface. Another thing I used to do that
often worked, is to gently pinch the sides of the disk together while firmly
turning the centre bit to wipe the disk surface on its liners (Arguably the
100 retries are only doing what the pinch-and-turn does, just a lot more
slowly and gently...). That very oftem improved things. I'd image that disk
then and write the image to a new one if I needd to. (I still have a big
DiskBank.zip full of files I can use in WinImage).

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in
:

I kill the process with Task Manager, which works - XP is
more robust that way - but from the way it does it, it is clearly having
a _major_ effect: it usually closes _all_ explorer windows, blanks and
eventually redraws the taskbar, breaks iconoid, redraws the desktop, and
so on. Again, I can't see why doing something as trivial as accessing a
floppy - even if it's dud - should have such a major effect on the
system. (I also think the XP system is less tolerant of the poor
floppy.)


Remember that currently, computer = Turing Machine, i.e. literally one
instruction at a time, so a low level timing function can hold up everything
else. Whether a task manager always interprets that as actual CPU hogging
when it's not, I don't know without experimenting, but all redraws and
anything else that needs CPU time have to wait. I don't think the CPU is any
busier though, I think it's just waiting like everything else when low level
I/O access is held up.

In ,
J. P. Gilliver (John) typed:
At work I use a '95 system to test some hardware, and
transfer the logs of the test to an XP system via floppy.
The '95 has a built-in floppy drive, the XP a USB one.

What I am puzzled about is why a bad floppy sucks away so
much in the way of system resources. Yes, obviously it
isn't cost-effective to use one, so I use a good one, but
just on principle, I'd like to know what's going on:

On the '95 system, if the floppy is bad, the write just
fails with an error message, that isn't a problem. But if
I run the (Windows) disc checking tool under A:'s
Properties, it not only runs very slowly - as I'd expect
- but also slows down the response time of anything else
the system is doing, to an incredible extent. Why does
the simple task of checking a floppy for bad sectors hog
the processor so much?
On the XP system, if the read fails, it also seems to
lock up the system. I don't know _what_ it is doing: it
sits there, not even accessing the floppy continuously -
the light comes on for a few seconds, then goes off for a
few seconds, and eventually - sometimes after a minute or
more - comes up with an error message; again, the system
is a little sluggish to do anything else, though nothing
like as much so as the '95 system. But what is really
weird is that it seems to sulk where the floppy is
concerned: once it has decided there is a problem, it
refuses - by going into the
I'll-stop-responding-for-ages-and-then-put-up-an-error-message
mode - to do _anything_ with the floppy, even delete or
rename a file, _or use a (different, good) floppy.
Sometimes, if I think it has locked up completely, I kill
the process with Task Manager, which works - XP is more
robust that way - but from the way it does it, it is
clearly having a _major_ effect: it usually closes _all_
explorer windows, blanks and eventually redraws the
taskbar, breaks iconoid, redraws the desktop, and so on.
Again, I can't see why doing something as trivial as
accessing a floppy - even if it's dud - should have such
a major effect on the system. (I also think the XP system
is less tolerant of the poor floppy.)
I repeat, I _know_ a good floppy is only pennies, and I
have one: it's just the principle that bugs me, of why
doing such a nominally simple thing should cripple both
systems so much.
(I've included the '98 newsgroup as I thought they might
be interested/have views/answers.)

Everyone who has responded so far has given good information. Taken
together, IMO they give a good picture of what's going on. A bit higher
level explanation might go thusly:

Being magnetic, floppy disks do lost their data over time as short as 6
months and as long as a year or so, depending on the care they receive in
storage and the condition of the floppy drive.
Back in the days of floppies & pre affordable hard drives, most
companies had a program of "refreshing" their floppies every 6 months or
thereabouts. Refreshing consisted of nothing but copying the data off the
drive, doing a Quick Format on it, and then copying the data back to the
floppy. Floppies would last several years that way as long as they were
stored somewhat reasonably away from heat, brght light (susnlight) and
anything magnetic like speakers. My collection of around 700 CP/M & DOS
floppies actually lasted long enough to finally be copied to hard disks and
external drives for backup archives. They're historcal records.

When a floppy starts to be formatted and begins taking forever (over a
couple minutes) without advancing it's a pretty good guess that the floppy
is bad. The OS makes several attempts to read the sectors (at least twice,
up to a hundred times or so) And then compares each of the reads, picking
the largest quantity of reads that are the same, and "assumes" that was a
good read and thus uses it. With 512k sectors that can get to be very time
consuming and a waste of time.
As someone mentioned, it's often best to use the command line for
formatting floppies for the extra control it provides.
There are DOS programs around that are meant to "recover" decaying
floppies. Mine seems to be lost in the archives somewhere; all I see left is
the WordStar to Word converter, meaning several others are hiding away from
me too.
The "recover floppy" program did a lot better and more efficient job than
anything you could do manually and was often surpsingly effectively. I guess
Google would be the best way to find it now.

As for locking up the sy

In ,
Twayne typed:
In ,
J. P. Gilliver (John) typed:
At work I use a '95 system to test some hardware, and
transfer the logs of the test to an XP system via floppy.
The '95 has a built-in floppy drive, the XP a USB one.

What I am puzzled about is why a bad floppy sucks away so
much in the way of system resources. Yes, obviously it
isn't cost-effective to use one, so I use a good one, but
just on principle, I'd like to know what's going on:

On the '95 system, if the floppy is bad, the write just
fails with an error message, that isn't a problem. But if
I run the (Windows) disc checking tool under A:'s
Properties, it not only runs very slowly - as I'd expect
- but also slows down the response time of anything else
the system is doing, to an incredible extent. Why does
the simple task of checking a floppy for bad sectors hog
the processor so much?
On the XP system, if the read fails, it also seems to
lock up the system. I don't know _what_ it is doing: it
sits there, not even accessing the floppy continuously -
the light comes on for a few seconds, then goes off for a
few seconds, and eventually - sometimes after a minute or
more - comes up with an error message; again, the system
is a little sluggish to do anything else, though nothing
like as much so as the '95 system. But what is really
weird is that it seems to sulk where the floppy is
concerned: once it has decided there is a problem, it
refuses - by going into the
I'll-stop-responding-for-ages-and-then-put-up-an-error-message
mode - to do _anything_ with the floppy, even delete or
rename a file, _or use a (different, good) floppy.
Sometimes, if I think it has locked up completely, I kill
the process with Task Manager, which works - XP is more
robust that way - but from the way it does it, it is
clearly having a _major_ effect: it usually closes _all_
explorer windows, blanks and eventually redraws the
taskbar, breaks iconoid, redraws the desktop, and so on.
Again, I can't see why doing something as trivial as
accessing a floppy - even if it's dud - should have such
a major effect on the system. (I also think the XP system
is less tolerant of the poor floppy.)
I repeat, I _know_ a good floppy is only pennies, and I
have one: it's just the principle that bugs me, of why
doing such a nominally simple thing should cripple both
systems so much.
(I've included the '98 newsgroup as I thought they might
be interested/have views/answers.)

Everyone who has responded so far has given good
information. Taken together, IMO they give a good picture
of what's going on. A bit higher level explanation might
go thusly:
Being magnetic, floppy disks do lost their data over time
as short as 6 months and as long as a year or so,
depending on the care they receive in storage and the
condition of the floppy drive. Back in the days of
floppies & pre affordable hard drives, most companies had a program of
"refreshing" their floppies
every 6 months or thereabouts. Refreshing consisted of
nothing but copying the data off the drive, doing a Quick
Format on it, and then copying the data back to the
floppy. Floppies would last several years that way as
long as they were stored somewhat reasonably away from
heat, brght light (susnlight) and anything magnetic like
speakers. My collection of around 700 CP/M & DOS floppies
actually lasted long enough to finally be copied to hard
disks and external drives for backup archives. They're
historcal records.
When a floppy starts to be formatted and begins taking
forever (over a couple minutes) without advancing it's a
pretty good guess that the floppy is bad. The OS makes
several attempts to read the sectors (at least twice, up
to a hundred times or so) And then compares each of the
reads, picking the largest quantity of reads that are the
same, and "assumes" that was a good read and thus uses
it. With 512k sectors that can get to be very time
consuming and a waste of time. As someone mentioned, it's
often best to use the command line for formatting
floppies for the extra control it provides. There are DOS
programs around that are meant to "recover" decaying
floppies. Mine seems to be lost in the archives
somewhere; all I see left is the WordStar to Word
converter, meaning several others are hiding away from me
too. The "recover floppy" program did a lot better and
more efficient job than anything you could do manually
and was often surpsingly effectively. I guess Google
would be the best way to find it now.
As for locking up the system, that shouldn't be happening of course. That
I'd attribute to either malware or more likely simply a corrupted system
file somewhere or a conflict with another program sitting in RAM. You
might try using the Command Line and Safe Mode if the floppy works n Safe
Mode; pretty sure it does.

IMO it's never useful to try to check a floppy for bad sectors: Let a Full
Format do that for you; it'll mark out any bad sectors for you unless there
are too many of them or the ID area of the floppy is damaged, which is often
the case. Fgure out what the system lines should have for data and try
rewriting them. It might work, might now.

Probably the most effective way to gt data off a floppy that was really
important to me/us was to use a hex editor and completely bypass the OS.
Copy the data, less the system data sectors, to another location and try to
open that; often it'll open. If it's a text file that often works, but if
it's an executable, and doesn't work, you're out of luck with this method.

That's my 'IIRC' anyway from some years agog. It all depends on how
important the data on the floppy is to you. If it's really important, time
is of the essence; floppies begin to degrade on the closer together inner
tracks and works its way outwards most of the time.

HTH,

Twayne`

wrote:
On Wed, 18 May 2011 08:33:55 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

At work I use a '95 system to test some hardware, and transfer the logs
of the test to an XP system via floppy. The '95 has a built-in floppy
drive, the XP a USB one.

What I am puzzled about is why a bad floppy sucks away so much in the

Back in the old dos days, there was some utility that would fix bad
floppies. Maybe someone can recommend what it's called.
Of course some are beyond repair, but it's worth a try. You might
lose some data in the process, but it will often overlay a useful
format on them without wiping the data. Of course if you have a copy
of the data, just reformat the floppy and see what happens.

Comment: It figures that XP will freak out and lock up over a bad
floppy. XP is more unstable than Win98 in my opinion.

The Norton Utilities 8.0( and some older versions.)
SubprogramISKTOOL.EXE
1:Make a disk bootable
2:recover from DOS recover(!!!!!)
3:revive badly readable floppy.
4:mark a cluster.(??????)

In ,
Sjouke Burry typed:
wrote:
On Wed, 18 May 2011 08:33:55 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver
(John)" wrote:

At work I use a '95 system to test some hardware, and
transfer the logs of the test to an XP system via
floppy. The '95 has a built-in floppy drive, the XP a
USB one. What I am puzzled about is why a bad floppy sucks away
so much in the

Back in the old dos days, there was some utility that
would fix bad floppies. Maybe someone can recommend
what it's called. Of course some are beyond repair, but it's worth a try.
You might lose some data in the process, but it will
often overlay a useful format on them without wiping the
data. Of course if you have a copy of the data, just
reformat the floppy and see what happens. Comment: It figures that XP
will freak out and lock up
over a bad floppy. XP is more unstable than Win98 in my
opinion.
The Norton Utilities 8.0( and some older versions.)
SubprogramISKTOOL.EXE
1:Make a disk bootable
2:recover from DOS recover(!!!!!)
3:revive badly readable floppy.
4:mark a cluster.(??????)

That's it! Works well if you can get your hands on a copy of it.

HTH,

Twayne`

In message , Tim Meddick
writes:
XP is a more complex piece of software than Win 9x, and goes about
trying to read data from a damaged disk differently, and tries more
methods in the attempt. This can result in Explorer locking-up CPU
resources for some time if it does not have any initial success.
[]
Also, if you do use Explorer (as I sometimes do, not realising there
may be a problem with a disk) - and find that CPU usage has reached
maximum and no-data is being read from the floppy - then you can always
simply close that instance of Windows Explorer, and the drive-read
operation will also be terminated - then simply just re-open another
Explorer - avoiding the damaged disk again.
[]
Not with that XP system: if explorer seems to be getting nowhere, then
attempting to close that Explorer instance (by clicking the X) usually
is ignored too. (Or may generate an error message, after a _long_ time.)
If I attempt to close it from task manager, that succeeds, but usually
closes _all_ Explorer windows.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Dailysex, or is it spelled dyslexia, rules KO! (Dr[.] J.[ ]B.[ ]Davis)

In message ,
Lostgallifreyan writes:
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in
:

On the '95 system, if the floppy is bad, the write just fails with an
error message, that isn't a problem. But if I run the (Windows) disc
checking tool under A:'s Properties, it not only runs very slowly - as
I'd expect - but also slows down the response time of anything else the
system is doing, to an incredible extent. Why does the simple task of
checking a floppy for bad sectors hog the processor so much?


Is it really the CPU time it's hogging? (Check in a good task manager..) It
might be the low level driver waiting and timing out and retrying that takes
all the time. Other parts of the system often have to wait for low level
driver accesses to complete, the same sort of thing shows up with browsers
trying to get remote data, etc.

No, everything slows to an unusable state on the '95 system when testing
the bad floppy. On the XP system, if I'm using the browser to access a
site that is being sluggish to respond, I can still use most other
functions without difficulty (email, explorer etc.). I can't say how
browser waiting would affect the '95 system, as it isn't networked, but
I don't _think_ it would slow it down as much as scanning the floppy
does.

(As to whether it's the CPU or a low level driver, I have no idea - I
just know the computer goes treacly. My main question is _why_; even '95
is a nominally multitasking system [yes I know multitasking is an
illusion on a Turing machine], so I don't see why.)

One thing I read about bad floppies, is that it's worth just letting it retry
up to 100 times overnight if need be, that it usually gets a read in the end
if there's no scarring of the disk surface. Another thing I used to do that
[]
Sorry, I clearly didn't stress enough that this is purely an
intellectual puzzle: lots of people are being very kind and helping me
to recover data from a dud floppy. I'm not: I have a good floppy for the
data transfers I need to do. I'm just curious as to why, on the '95
system, _scanning_ the failing floppy seems to hog so much of the system
resources, and on the XP system, why once having had a "bad read" or
similar experience, it seems to screw up use of the (USB) floppy drive
for getting on for the remains of that session, even if I use the good
floppy.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Dailysex, or is it spelled dyslexia, rules KO! (Dr[.] J.[ ]B.[ ]Davis)