Disk cleaning-Error 27 solution?

[jonasanu]

Hi,

i bought a pack of old disks in Japan. After proper head adjustment of my disk drive, i havnt problems with disk reading at all.
But few disk from the new pack cant be read, with infamous error 27 on the screen.
I grew up with 5,25 diskettes and i remembered it was possible to resurrect some old dirty ones with a proper clean.
So i try to look on the disk surface of faulty ones, they was quite messy for sure.
Just used few Qtips soaked with tech. alcohol and rub a dirty stains gently.
After few tries all 3 faulty ones plays as new!

Does somebody experience a same?
I read a lot about FDS reliability and how bad its is, its not seems like a case, i have now like 30 disks from all around the world in all kinds of shape and they all working great.
It seems like pretty simple solution, if they have reading problems and disk surface is not scratch badly. Or maybe im just lucky?

P.s. maybe its a good idea to try it out on some shitty ones, not on Metroid, for a first time 

[chowder]

The reliability issues are generally related to the FDS itself, not so much the disks.  Although rewritten disks may have problems if they were made using a drive with slightly different head alignment to yours.

FDS adjustment is pretty easy to get right with a bit of practice, but some drives just don't want to play ball.  I have one that somehow throws itself out every few weeks

[ericj]

Cleaning the disk surface can make error-throwing disks work, but I've found that it's sometimes short-lived, likely depending on what's causing the problem in the first place. If the disk is just dirty or has a spot of something on it, this usually fixes it up, but if it's degradation of the disk surface and oxidation, then it will re-occur with time. Also, if the disk has visible grime on it, then it probably transferred that to the drive's magnetic head, which will then need cleaned.