DEVICE: GreaseWeazle 4.1
DRIVE: TEAC FD-55GFR
SUITE: FluxEngine (decoder.retries=250, drive.revolutions=1.2)
ARCHIVER: Lee Smallbone
ARCHIVED: 2026-03-11 1000AM (GMT/UTC)
REPEATED: 2026-06-29 1000AM (GMT/UTC)
NOTES:
Disk attempted to be read on Dell 286: "General Failure Reading Drive A:"
Disk was heavily contaminated with mould.
Attempt made to read disk as-is with GreaseWeazle rig, but failed on almost all sectors.
Disk drive heads thoroughly cleaned (3x 'gw clean' cycles with a isopropyl alcohol-soaked cleaning disk)
Method:
1) Disk unsleaved.
2) Bathed in a 2 drops washing up liquid / warm water solution.
3) Disk gently cleaned with lint-free swab on both sides and dried thoroughly.
4) Magnetic media inserted into clean donor sleave for archiving.
5) Bad sector re-read: 2 sectors still cannot be read.
6) Using FluxEngine media map, spot-cleaning with isopropyl alcohol undertaken.
7) Bad sector re-read attempted, but still unreadable.
S0C0H0 and S0C0H1 OK, so .IMG saved from raw Flux
Image mounted in VirtualBox DOS 6.22, and Norton Utilities (Norton Disk Doctor) used to recover
5 lost fragments.
FILE000n._DD files then reconstructed to correct directory and filenames where able..
100% media recovery.
Disk returned to original sleave for archiving.
Some reconstruction work still required.
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A 2nd copy of this disk came into the archive's possession in June 2026 from a massive 200+ disk collection purchased from eBay.
This disk was in an even worse condition than the first one but after an hour of gentle cleaning and multiple (hundreds) of passes in FluxEngine a complete recovery was achieved.
The original disk as described above has been retained in the archive as well and is now referred to as the 'repaired' disk below. The original, full recovered disk is now the main one available via this archive.
