Nice work, Tom!

There's a good chance this "dust" is just mildew (which I generally clean off with isopropyl alcohol and cotton swabs). A picture would help identify it. Cleaning the mildew made it possible to read the vast majority of the hundreds of my 3.5" disks (And plenty others) that I imaged which previously had "bad sectors." If using isopropyl alcohol, be sure to test near the center ring first to make sure it won't damage the disk (which can be the case if it's a Wabash disk or similarly has bad binder). The swab should be clean and not have any black oxide on it.

There's also the off-chance that this disk used the bad binder that affected Wabash disks. This would be really bad as it makes the media fall apart and crumble when read. To see if this is the case, try gently scraping the disk with your fingernail or something similar near the center ring and see if the media scrapes off.

Hope this helps! Always test near the center ring, that way you won't damage media that might be holding data.

David

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