My floppy drive doesn't seem to be working

[snickers1300]

It just tells my to insert a disk in the drive. I have ones that are a couple years old and the computer should read something..... This problem is now on two computers. I have about 30 data disks. Do they go bad? I'm stuck with this one?

 

[warezme]

whats that?

 

[snickers1300]

3.5 floppy drive. Do the disks go bad over time? Why, on two computers, are they not reading any of my disks. One disk is only two-three years old.

 

[AwsmGy]

Check your BIOS, the drive is probably disabled.

 

[cadder]

You and me might be the only people left with floppy drives, and I even have a combo with 3.5" AND 5.25".

I have a stack of disks that I plan to read in before I build my next computer, as it might not have a floppy interface on the mobo.

To answer your question, yes theoretically the magnetic signal on a floppy disk will degrade with time. I have not tried to read any of mine in many years, hopefully I'm not surprised when I try it although I don't think there is anything there that I can't live without.

 

[festerovic]

if the A: drive and floppy icon show in windows, the drive is recognized and is on in the bios.

Not sure if the mobo detects there is a drive attached via a connection or not, so if the cable was backwards, it might still say there is drive, but it won't recognize anything, which is why you get Please insert... message.

Floppy drives do go bad, but I still have 400k 3.5" disks from my old Mac that read fine. Put in a new disk (LOL) and try to format it if you think the disks are the problem.