needle in a haystack: about an hour to 5 hours, with modern technology
5¼" floppy drive: about a day to 10 days, going through every Salvation Army or Goodwill place you can find
I had one, in fact I had two, but you're about four years too late. I'm typing this from my Computer Specialist class, the teacher of which has several, so I know they're still out there, and I can't very well say "Hey, this guy wants a 5¼" floppy drive, could you give him one?", and to be completely honest I would probably keep any 5¼" floppy drive I found for myself, because they're so hard to find.
Do you live in the U.S.? If so, I would go through Salvation Army and Goodwill places; I'm not sure if they call them stores, and I'm not sure about other countries. Other than that, I'd say be patient and keep hoping one shows up on eBay.
I think I heard once about a company that sells old PC hardware like that, but I'm really not sure at all; maybe you can find it, if it exists.
Good luck! 😀

"They can have my 5 1/4 floppy when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers!"

I almost drown in them xD (but I'm lazy)

If I'm reading this right, it looks like a 10pk of 5.25" floppy drives for about $50 plus shipping:

http://www.amazon.com/10PK-5-25-1-2MB-Floppy- … e/dp/B0000DCK7T

Not that you need 10 but you could always ebay the rest if they are that hard to find. Or maybe you can contact them and see if they will sell you just 1. They should be all over ebay too, I recently bought a Teac FD-505 combo 3.5/5.25 inch floppy off ebay and I still see listings out there for those as well.

I.e. here are some listings that I found quickly:

http://computers.search-desc.ebay.com/5-25_Ot … gZ1QQsofocusZbs

I recently tossed a sweet combo 5.25/3.5" drive. 😀 I haven't touched a 5.25" floppy for about 10 yrs...

"tossed"? as in "threw away"? please tell me that's not what you meant, because I would keep such a thing my whole life just for the historical value; for other reasons too, but the historical value would be enough, like owning an original Macintosh or something
yeah, apparently there are a bunch of them for sale, some at reasonable prices, some not
I assumed that posting this here meant he (she?) had already checked eBay and the other likely places. However, he said "[one] you could part with", which is roughly what I say when I'm trying to say I want something for free. Honestly, if I had a few (more than 3), I'd give you one but make you pay for the shipping.

Actually I dropped it off at a recycling place. 😁 It came with a Gateway 2000 Pentium 90 that I found in a giveaway pile at my university years ago. I used it for years but decided to get rid of some of my excessive retro collection and tossed that whole baby AT desktop case with the drive still inside.

Years ago I copied all contents of any 5.25" disks that I still wanted to have to my hard drive and a backup CD. I haven't even seen a 5.25" disk in years, let alone used one.

I am amazed that they would be hard to find on ebay though. Might just need to buy a old machine. 😀

I got few 5.25", but they just don't work anymore. Is it possible to repair them? When floppy drive do not recognize inserted disks anymore, what component needs to get fixed/replaced?

Probably the floppy itself....

general_vagueness wrote:

"tossed"? as in "threw away"? please tell me that's not what you meant, because I would keep such a thing my whole life just for the historical value; for other reasons too, but the historical value would be enough, like owning an original Macintosh or something

I suppose you keep 8-track cassette players too? 🤣

Now if I could just get a USB 5.25" floppy drive.

I think I've found some in my own conutry (Sweden) with the help of some guys at a swedish Amiga forum

I have some games that are on 5.25 disks...otherwise I could have cope without this floppy drive

I'm glad to hear it and once again good luck.

Jorpho wrote:

I suppose you keep 8-track cassette players too? 🤣

no, I don't have any 😉

but really, if you had, say, a drawing by done a famous artist before the artist was famous, you would keep it, even if it sucked, right? kind of the same idea

I still have one in my mothers basement (around 700km away from here). LAst time I used it to just quickly copy my last 5 1/4 floppy disk game and that was that. I wouldn't give it away but I'm not sure whether I will ever have use for it anymore 😀
Funnily, I grew up with a C64 but between my C64 time and my PC time some years were in between. When I bought my first PC I was very strict on having a 5 1/4 drive (even though it was already an out of use hardware piece mostly) because I thought with a C64 emulator I could read my C64 floppies with this drive 😀
Didn't take me too long to recognize my error 😀
In the end I bought a LPT adapter to hook up my old C64 drive and copy my C64 disks that way 😀 (that drive is also in my mothers basement)

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

I got few 5.25", but they just don't work anymore. Is it possible to repair them? When floppy drives do not recognize inserted disks anymore, what component needs to get fixed/replaced?

I haven't exactly fixed floppy drives before, but I have definitely troubleshooted (troubleshot?) several of them, and taken apart several working and broken 3½ and 5¼ inch drives (once all the way down to taking apart the motor), so I might be able to help, it could be a very simple mechanical problem, but trans-oceanic shipping rates... ooh 🤑 😵
if you can afford, I'd be happy to look at them for free (I'm bored)

I have a few, but they all suffer rust damage :[

general_vagueness wrote:

I haven't exactly fixed floppy drives before, but I have definitely troubleshooted (troubleshot?) several of them, and taken apart several working and borken 3½ and 5¼ inch drives (once all the way down to taking apart the motor)

I see. I actually have two hi-density (1.2MB) 5.25" floppy drives. One cannot read hi-density 5.25" floppies anymore, although it can still read 360KB floppies. The other, well, it just refuses to recognize any floppies being inserted.

Wonder if they can still get fixed. Does 5.25" floppy drive have the same head with 3.5" drives? If it's the head that gets damaged, how hard it is to find replacement part?

no, it has a larger head with the inductors (or whatever they're called) larger and farther apart; getting just a head would be hard, not only because of age, interest, etc., but because it's the most important part
there is a little hole that indicates density on 5¼" floppies, the sensor that detects it is probably broken or misaligned (not lined up with where the hole is)
as far as not detecting a disk at all, all 5¼" FDDs that I know of have a door or latch of some kind, a mechanism that must be closed for the drive to work, and also signals the mobo that there is a disk in the drive, so that might be broken
I think (I'm not sure) that with advanced electronics you usually hope it's a mechanical problem and not electronic, because mechanical problems can be fixed in many ways, but usually electronic problem ==> replace a chip, which usually isn't worth it, as in cheaper or easier to replace the whole thing

The heads in floppy drives are usually quite robust, in most cases it is not the head that causes an old floppy drive to fail.
It could be a simple sensor problem, as general_vagueness mentioned, but the most common issue with old drives seems to be misalignment of the head positioning mechanics/electronics. This can be fixed on some of the (very expensive) early brand name drives, however you'll need advanced equipment, a bit of knowledge, and probably much time to do this.
Later models can't be readjusted, because they were designed to be mass-produced cheaply, and the user was expected to buy a new drive when the old one "went out of whack".
So, if you've got a sturdy TEAC built in 1985, it might be worth repairing, but don't waste your time on a wobbly Mitsumi from 1992... 😉