As is the case with optical drives, floppy drives are delicate too. They can be made to work for long durations of over 10 years ( My friend has one ! ). But owing to its low cost of under 10$ most of us do not take proper care of it. These days floppies are used rearely but no system can exclude this small drive. Windows and other third party programs like virus scanners and backup tools still use floppies to recover the system, if in any case the booting fails. So we cannot avoid it from the configuration of our PC.
Here are some ways to preserve your Floppy drive.
The most important thing is to use good quality media. IBM's DOS formatted floppies are really good.
Use the drive regularly. If the drive is kept unused for long periods, it becomes dirty inside and hence it turns useless. To keep using it regularly there is a easy method. Keep a floppy disc inside it always. When you start your computer it searches for floppy in the drive and checks for boot data in it. That way the floppy drive is regularly used, automatically! But before you do that, remember to change the primary boot device to your harddisc or so , else you will be asked to remove the floppy from the drive, for the system to start.
Also remeber to have a floppy drive cleaner of good quality and clean the drive atleast once in two weeks.
Do not insert a floppy in to its drive if you know that the disc is not good or has got fungus inside. Always prevention is better than cure. When you try reading a floppy if the drive do not respond, do not try inserting the floppy again if it can be avoided.
Also take care not to remove a floppy disc when the light of the drive is lit. When the light is lit, the floppy is being read and hence musn't be interrupted. Floppy discs are read not with laser but by a reading head. So removing it while it is being read can damage the head.
Keep your floppies away from dust and moisture.
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