SE

nice sounds like a dead hd. had the same issue with mine. i just replaced the hd with a newer one.

If you hear no sound, it may be stiction, which is often cured by removing the drive and violently shaking it in a rotational fashion, so as to free the disc from it's "locked up" position. If you don't get it spinning right at first, proceed to amplify your violence, you haven't much to loose.

I heard dropping it onto a hard surface could cure it. Or freezing it.

If you're gonna try freezing it, put it in a ziplok with some of those moisture absorber things, and let it thaw back up to room temp in the bag before using it.

I heard dropping it onto a hard surface could cure it. Or freezing it.

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Freezing is the wrong choice if the problem is stiction. It can only help if excessive read errors prevent booting/mounting/data recovery.

I dropped a laptop drive from my second story bedroom, nothing happened...

I dropped a laptop drive from my second story bedroom, nothing happened...

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What, it's still hovering outside your bedroom window?

Perhaps Newton was wrong.

Try booting the SE and leave it on for a while, then try restarting it. Sometimes drives in a fit will work if you do this.

Well I pulled the hard drive and gave it a good whack or three and it booted. Doesn't sound very healthy though...

I will find me some 800K floppies and copy the files and replace the Miniscribe with a 250 MB I have spare. Did I read somewhere that you can use a 1.4 MB as an 800K floppy?

Well I pulled the hard drive and gave it a good whack or three and it booted. Doesn't sound very healthy though...
I will find me some 800K floppies and copy the files and replace the Miniscribe with a 250 MB I have spare. Did I read somewhere that you can use a 1.4 MB as an 800K floppy?

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Yes you can in a sense..

Cover the whole other than the read/write lock with tape. That should make the machines think it's single-sided. However! It's not the best.

Because of the way Superdrive disks work (1.44), it doesn't work real well with the various strengths of magnetism.

It may just be worth it to pick up some 800k disks. The 1.44 will work in the meantime, but I got 10x 800k disks for like $10 shipped off of eBay

While it's not cheap, they were new, and the older floppies seems to last a LONG time compared to the 1.44.

It seems that older floppies were made with better/more expensive media, which is why they still last and run and are sometimes up to 20 years old and still work.

1.44MB floppies I got 2 years ago already have read/write errors, and I have had to throw out about 3/4ths of them because they went bad. Some of them were either never used, or only used 2x max.

I'd keep using the miniscribe. It's a very cool drive and makes all sorts of neat sounds. If you hear a loud, short grinding sound sometimes when you first turn it on, this is normal.

I would bet that the drive sat for a very long time without spinning. Years perhaps. Freeing it up may be all that it needed; it may be a perfectly reliable drive now.

Dennis, I agree. From what the guy told me, it did sit for a long time. It's been reinstalled in the SE as it's booted fine the last few days. I like to keep these old machines as stock as possible. I found lots of cool old games on it too like Mac Pong and Mac Yahtzee. Thanks for all the help everybody