3.5 HHD drive problem

Greetings all,

I have not used my 3.5 drive in about a year or so and found myself needing
it.
I installed a disk and tried to read it.
I got an error message that said

A:\ is not accessible
No ID address mark was found on the floopy disk.

I tried sevral disk all with same problem.

Thanks for your help.
Dave-

On Fri, 13 Mar 2009 06:06:15 -0400, "xanth"
wrote:

I have not used my 3.5 drive in about a year or so and found myself needing
it.
I installed a disk and tried to read it.
I got an error message that said

A:\ is not accessible
No ID address mark was found on the floopy disk.

I tried sevral disk all with same problem.

3.5 drive as in floppy drive ?
In that case, my first guess would be: connector mounted upside
down.
And the very sad news: attempting to read a floppy while the
drive's connector is upside down often destroys a vital part of
all disks you attempted to read.

But maybe you are lucky and 'only' forgot to connect the power
connector.

--
Kind regards,
Gerard Bok

xanth wrote:
Greetings all,

I have not used my 3.5 drive in about a year or so and found myself needing
it.
I installed a disk and tried to read it.
I got an error message that said

A:\ is not accessible
No ID address mark was found on the floopy disk.

I tried sevral disk all with same problem.

Thanks for your help.
Dave-




It probably just died

replace it

"xanth" wrote in message
...

Greetings all,

I have not used my 3.5 drive in about a year or so and found myself
needing it.
I installed a disk and tried to read it.
I got an error message that said

A:\ is not accessible
No ID address mark was found on the floopy disk.

I tried sevral disk all with same problem.

Thanks for your help.
Dave-




or just dust..........give it a good blow job.

On Fri, 13 Mar 2009 06:06:15 -0400, "xanth"
wrote:


Greetings all,

I have not used my 3.5 drive in about a year or so and found myself needing
it.
I installed a disk and tried to read it.
I got an error message that said

A:\ is not accessible
No ID address mark was found on the floopy disk.

I tried sevral disk all with same problem.

Thanks for your help.
Dave-


Put a new blank disc in, then if it was a pre-formatted
disc, see if it will see the filesystem. If it will, write
to the disc then read the file back.

If it won't see the filesystem, format the disc, then write
files and read them back. The goal is to see if the drive
is functioning at all, if it has broken or degraded till it
won't work at all, or if it is only an alignment problem
(though it's alignment may not be adjustable?).

The old standby test is the same as with other parts, to
swap in known working parts to reduce the variables. Try
those floppies in another drive/system, or try another drive
in that system.

You might also try opening the drive, blowing out the dust,
lubing the rails, and cleaning the head with pure alcohol.
Then again, floppy drives only cost about $10, or it might
be best to just borrow use of a computer that can read them
then copy them all to something more reliable like a USB
thumbdrive for transportation purposes.

Thanks for your help,

drive is up and running.

needed it for a Pinewood derby race, we have an old Compac w/o cdrom and its
so old that it was a USB 1.0 ( going back to Win 98 days) so it wont even
find a usb flash drive.

Xanth


"xanth" wrote in message
...

Greetings all,

I have not used my 3.5 drive in about a year or so and found myself
needing it.
I installed a disk and tried to read it.
I got an error message that said

A:\ is not accessible
No ID address mark was found on the floopy disk.

I tried sevral disk all with same problem.

Thanks for your help.
Dave-

On Wed, 18 Mar 2009 07:35:07 -0400, "xanth"
wrote:

Thanks for your help,

drive is up and running.

needed it for a Pinewood derby race, we have an old Compac w/o cdrom and its
so old that it was a USB 1.0 ( going back to Win 98 days) so it wont even
find a usb flash drive.

Xanth


Sometimes it's possible to look at the chipset the drive
controller/adapter uses and find a driver for Win98 that
way, if the manufacturer doesn't offer a driver for '98.

kony wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2009 07:35:07 -0400, "xanth"
wrote:

Thanks for your help,

drive is up and running.

needed it for a Pinewood derby race, we have an old Compac w/o cdrom and its
so old that it was a USB 1.0 ( going back to Win 98 days) so it wont even
find a usb flash drive.

Xanth


Sometimes it's possible to look at the chipset the drive
controller/adapter uses and find a driver for Win98 that
way, if the manufacturer doesn't offer a driver for '98.

I've had great success with these Windows 98 Mass Storage drivers:

http://www.technical-assistance.co.uk/kb/usbmsd98.php

You have to be careful and install the version that matches you edition
of Windows 98. I can only vouch for the Windows 98 SE one--it has
worked for a wide variety of thumb drives.