Yes, you need some cleaning fluid but you should be able to substitute Denatured Alcohol of 95 percent or better.

Also they have both sides open so a double-sided floppy drive should work fine.

What happend if i dont use the cleaning liquid? Raping the heads of the drive?
Iam have order some of Isopropyl Alcohol 99.9% Pure 100ml. So i hope that would do the trick. Only wait when its arrives.

Robin4 wrote:

What happend if i dont use the cleaning liquid? Raping the heads of the drive?
Iam have order some of Isopropyl Alcohol 99.9% Pure 100ml. So i hope that would do the trick. Only wait when its arrives.

Well I would think that it just wears out the R/W heads faster then if you use it *with* cleaning solution 😉

I just use Isopropyl Alcohol and a couple of Q-tips, the heads are glass coated anyways, so it's not an issue what % it is as long as it's 90% or more.

I used Vodka on mine and that worked as well. Prolly not as great as pure alcohol, but hell after youre done cleaning you can still have a vodka coke. So far the drive didnt rust or stuff if anyone was expecting that, but i also didnt make the disk soaking wet.

I think the Q-tip thingy is a good advice. I got a couple of those 5 1/4 inch drives waiting for years to be tested and no cleaning disk.

A Q-tip isnt handy when there is a PCB above the drive.. And it isnt worth to dissamble the whole unit, for only cleaning the heads.. Now i only have to put the disk in and its clean..

Today i received my hoped ISOPROPANOL ALCOHOL, so if i have time iam going to try it out a sees if it would work..

http://www.ebay.com/itm/IPA-Isopropyl-Alcohol … 297078669499588

I remember having partially disassembled such a drive. The heads were relatively easy to reach, but it's been years since I done that. And anyway, that way I won't have to buy a cleaning disk, I'm probably not going to be using the 5 1/4 drives a lot (maybe just for kicks 😁 )

Robin4 wrote:

Iam have order some of Isopropyl Alcohol 99.9% Pure 100ml. So i hope that would do the trick. Only wait when its arrives.

That's really kind of overkill, considering how much more expensive it's likely to be. But then, I suppose the price difference doesn't amount to much if you're only dealing with one small bottle.

Actually it was very cheap!

Cleaning didnt work. Think the heads are dead.. He is trying to read.. then get an error.. Trying to format a B floppy and says the drive is busy.

And the heads of the q-tip are to big to get them between the heads..

Robin4 wrote:

And the heads of the q-tip are to big to get them between the heads..

How about paper towel?

If the head is clean and not damaged the disk drive may need alignment.

http://apple2.info/wiki/index.php?title=Flopp … Drive_Alignment

fronzel wrote:

If the head is clean and not damaged the disk drive may need alignment.

http://apple2.info/wiki/index.php?title=Flopp … Drive_Alignment

I'm actually worried about this problem when it's my non-1.44 floppy drives. Is it possible to re-align them again? Preferably in an easy and cheap way? 😁

Normally only 5.25 inch floppy and older were prone to requiring allignment - 3.5 Inch ones usually should not require (or even offer an ability ) to allign them. For 3.5 inch floppy drives usually best you can do is clean the heads and pray they still work properly. But at least the later 3.5 inch drives are neither rare nor expensive.

Robin4 wrote:

Cleaning didnt work. Think the heads are dead.. He is trying to read.. then get an error.. Trying to format a B floppy and says the drive is busy.

And the heads of the q-tip are to big to get them between the heads..

I'd say align the heads of the drive, 5 1/4" drives were prone to dis-align, especially on the Commodore 64 1541 drives... not only were those drives loud and "chattered" alot, they dis-aligned often, especially if you were a Commodore pirate back in the day, or had access to pirated material. 🤣

The 1541 alignment thing is a myth, it was usually dirty heads. Only the first batch of them (the white ones) had alignment problems because the stepper shaft was made of a soft metal, not steel, so it actually twisted with repeated head banging. I have 25 year old drives which got used all day long for many years and they are still in perfect alignment. 1541's head get very dirty tho, but the q-top method is ideal for them 😁

Only need to look for an alignment disk.

An allignment disk will probably be expensive if you can even get one. A new 5.25 floppy drive will probably cost much less than an allugnment disk.