Did it work previously before the cleaning? If so, things to check: proper lubrication of worm axle of stepper motor and head rails. If you cleaned all the grease off, the head won't move properly. Double check that there is no left over gunk on track 0 sensor (either mechanical or optical) and that DD/HD switch moves freely. If that photo is from your testing, check that the floppy spin motor spindle doesn't touch your table surface and can move freely, there is a flywheel for the motor on the bottom side and many drives has this part is exposed. A good way to make sure of that is to put the drive sideways while testing on bench.

If it didn't work or you didn't test the drive before cleaning, it may have just failed. I've bumped in to several old floppy drives which have pretty much certainly bad capacitors. Usual symptoms are "lazy" operation of the floppy spin motor or head step motor. In this case the drive needs a recap, something that I've bothered with only with PS/2 drive, because working floppy drives can still be easily found.

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2025-09-05, 05:47:

Did it work previously before the cleaning? If so, things to check: proper lubrication of worm axle of stepper motor and head rails. If you cleaned all the grease off, the head won't move properly. Double check that there is no left over gunk on track 0 sensor (either mechanical or optical) and that DD/HD switch moves freely. If that photo is from your testing, check that the floppy spin motor spindle doesn't touch your table surface and can move freely, there is a flywheel for the motor on the bottom side and many drives has this part is exposed. A good way to make sure of that is to put the drive sideways while testing on bench.

If it didn't work or you didn't test the drive before cleaning, it may have just failed. I've bumped in to several old floppy drives which have pretty much certainly bad capacitors. Usual symptoms are "lazy" operation of the floppy spin motor or head step motor. In this case the drive needs a recap, something that I've bothered with only with PS/2 drive, because working floppy drives can still be easily found.

Yes it did work fine no issues before, but I'm thinking I misaligned the heads because I can kinda format it, just it doesn't like to theres a lot of errors but it does get some formatting on there, although I have no clue on how to re align a 3.5" head, any pointers would be great.

Normally you adjust the heads on these drives by loosening the mounting screws on the motor and turning the motor. But you of course need to measure the adjustments, it is very delicate job. Here is quite good basic tutorial what you need to do:

https://polprog.net/blog/fdalign/

If it was working before you disassembled and cleaned it, chances are that
you moved something or didn't put it back together quite correctly.

Check that the heads are free moving and come close enough together to touch
when no disk is inserted.

If you have a DOS system, you can use my ImageDisk tool to do fairly detailed
analysis/debug of a drive. It has a "Align/Test" function which lets you
perform low-level/basic operations (like seek to track) and evaluate how well
it can read/write/format in more detail than the usual FDC commands.
- You can get ImageDisk at DavesOldComputers->Software/Images

Verify that it seeks correctly. Try track 0 and 79 which should move the head
to the outer/inner limit, and 39 which should near the middle (1/2 way).

Confirm that the head loads/unloads correctly - I often do this without
a disk and a thin strip of paper under the head from the side. When opon/unloaded
you should be able to move the paper strip side to side with little resistance,
when closed/loaded (ie: trying to read the non-existant disk, there should be
more resistance (don't force it to move, just confirm that it doesn't want to
like it did when unloaded).

How much did you disassemble it? Did you just take the cover off to
access the internals. or did you unscrew/remove parts for deep cleaing?

If you didn't remove/loosen the head or stepper assembly, and it was working
before, it's unlikely you affected the alignment - but if you did, ImageDisk
has a function the help align the drive to a known well aligned disk (best to
use a official "alignment disk", but one formatter to a new or known good
drive is usually "good enough").