Question - 3½" Floppies

[graafen]

Does anyone know how to clean tacky gunk off 3½" floppies disks? I've been rooting around in some Amiga disks I got from eBay and some of them are unusable due to the said tacky gunk.



It looks like some kinda cola residue.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Comments

[alohawolf.livejournal.com]

Naptha should be ok for the plastics involved.

[griffinwolf.livejournal.com]

Um, I would have said IPA (that's Iso-propyl Alcohol), so long as you're gentle?

I don't know if naptha would be a good idea (I'm assuming you're thinking of lacquer cleaner?) I'm not sure if it's just the housing that you have a problem with, or the film itself?

[shep-shepherd.livejournal.com]

WD-40 or GT85?

[yagfox.livejournal.com]

If it's cola or coffee, soapy water! Alcohols won't shift that!

[hytiger.livejournal.com]

Agreed :)

[cheetah-spotty.livejournal.com]

I agree with yagfox ... if the stains are just on the outside, it's probably some spilled sugary softdring. A wet cloth should get rid of those, just make sure no water gets inside the case.

[graafen]

Thankfully the gunk is viscous enough that I was able to wipe most of it off with paper towels, however some of the disks have it on the inside of the shutter. Is there any way that I can prise the shutter off and not leave it deformed?

[accordion-hero.livejournal.com]

Mineral spirits

[megadog.livejournal.com]

If they're more than 4 or 5 years old, chances are they'll be unreadable anyway. Magnetic degradation - it's a fact-of-life.

[Back when I was involved with a rather large data-storage program for NIREX we copied and verified all the archival magtapes on a six-monthly cycle to avoid this 'magnetic bit-rot' problem]