need help about this "cycling redundancy check"

[jincuteguy]

somehow I got an error said that " cycling redundancy check" when I try to install a game such as Diablo II. It' slike during the installation i got that error. And my floppy disk that I 've been using for a lon gtime now suddenly doesn't work anymore and I got that error too. I tried to format the floppy disk but it said "cannot format ". I used a new floppy disk, and it worked and it can read and I can save data to it. But then after a couple of days, I put that floppy disk in again, andnow I got the error and there's no way I can format the disk , it's like the floppy disk got jacked up or something. What is going on ? cananyone help? thx.

 

[lunitic]

The cyclic redundancy check (CRC) is a method to make sure data read from a floppy disk is ok. (Actually this CRC is used in many places, like communications, CD and DVD's, tapes and even memory). So the floppy drive was not able to read the disk properly.

There can be many reasons for this, but in your case it is probably one of these:
1. The read/write head of the disk is dirty. Go to a computer store and buy a floppy drive cleaner set. Or disassemble the drive and clean the heads with alcohol. Or buy a new drive - floppy drives are cheap.
2. The diskette is bad. Either the magnetically stored data is destroyed or the medium is bad. The data may be destroyed by leaving the diskette near strong magnetic fields (speakers for example), or it may be destroyed by old age. The magnetic information deteriorates with time, and with each time it is read. In fact a floppy drive should regularly be rewritten to refresh the magnetic signal. Another point is that the surface of the magnetic layer is vulnerable to moisture. Not only does that deteriorate the magnetic signal but (worse) this creates a film of dirt which aggregates on the read/write head of the floppy drive. That's why you need to store your floppies in a dry environment.

So, in a nutshell: clean the floppy drive regularly. Regularly diskcopy the floppies on themselves. Store them in a dry environment, away from magnetic fields.

 

[jincuteguy]

what about my cd-rom, i got the CRC problem sometimes when reading old burning cds that I had for a while. Is this mean something wrong with mymotherboard? or just the drives?

 

[lunitic]

If only with old CDRoms the surface of the CDROM may be scratched or filthy. Or the dye of the CD is deteriorating.

I'm thinking about the error. Most apps would say something about "Error reading data", "Disk Error" or something - the app wouldn't know (nor care) what error. Could you give me the exact error message: reporting module, exact text, what you were doing etc.