07-19-2020, 12:39 PM
You really need to clean the heads constantly. The quality of the flux (and the recoverability of the data) is based on the heads. I have dumped more than 30,000 disks now and I clean the heads just about every single new disk I dump. I can’t stress this point enough, you need to clean the heads frequently! The state of the oxide over decades has degraded severely and those particles stick to (and become fused due to the constant friction of the disk rotating) the heads and typically you must use a fiber type disk cleaner. I would not recommend just a cotton swab because that is not aggressive enough to really clean the surface of hard debris.