Re: Disused Floppy Drive Needs Head Exercise.

2012-11-06 Thread Doug
On 11/06/2012 10:51 AM, Martin McCormick wrote: Is there any utility that will move the heads on a floppy drive from one stop to the other? I needed to write a floppy on an old system and discovered that the drive's head moving hardware has gotten stiff with disuse. It gets better the mor

Re: Disused Floppy Drive Needs Head Exercise.

2012-11-06 Thread Stan Hoeppner
On 11/6/2012 11:34 AM, Martin McCormick wrote: > Stan Hoeppner writes: >> #!/bin/bash >> count=0 >> while [ $count -le 100 ]; do >>dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/dev/null count=1 skip=1 >>dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/dev/null count=1 skip=2940 >>let count=count+1 >> done > > Thanks! That appears to be doing

Re: Disused Floppy Drive Needs Head Exercise.

2012-11-06 Thread Martin McCormick
Stan Hoeppner writes: > #!/bin/bash > count=0 > while [ $count -le 100 ]; do >dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/dev/null count=1 skip=1 >dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/dev/null count=1 skip=2940 >let count=count+1 > done Thanks! That appears to be doing the job. Time will tell if it frees it up. Martin -- To

Re: Disused Floppy Drive Needs Head Exercise.

2012-11-06 Thread Stan Hoeppner
On 11/6/2012 9:51 AM, Martin McCormick wrote: > Is there any utility that will move the heads on a > floppy drive from one stop to the other? I needed to write a > floppy on an old system and discovered that the drive's head > moving hardware has gotten stiff with disuse. It gets better the >

Re: Disused Floppy Drive Needs Head Exercise.

2012-11-06 Thread Martin McCormick
Darac Marjal writes: > You could try a disk-benchmarking program such as bonnie++. > Alternatively, use dd with alternating seek= parameters to write to the > start/end/start/end/... of the disk. Both sound like good ideas. I will try dd first since it is at hand and see if the mechanism f

Re: Disused Floppy Drive Needs Head Exercise.

2012-11-06 Thread Darac Marjal
On Tue, Nov 06, 2012 at 09:51:59AM -0600, Martin McCormick wrote: > Is there any utility that will move the heads on a > floppy drive from one stop to the other? I needed to write a > floppy on an old system and discovered that the drive's head > moving hardware has gotten stiff with disuse.

Disused Floppy Drive Needs Head Exercise.

2012-11-06 Thread Martin McCormick
Is there any utility that will move the heads on a floppy drive from one stop to the other? I needed to write a floppy on an old system and discovered that the drive's head moving hardware has gotten stiff with disuse. It gets better the more I do something like dd if=/dev/fd0 of=somefile,