How to make better floppy images

[Petari]

Floppies are now really old. People still does images of old games, and we still have not all games Pastified.
Unfortunately, by Pasti images is not easy to judge are they OK or not. Imaging SW can not know what is real error (CRC) or just part of the protection(s). I save recently some bad floppy images in Pasti format, and likely there is more online, just we are not aware about it.

To make better images, here are some advices, which stay for any image format, so ST, MSA too - with MAKEDISK, FloImg, Pasti etc...  :

If floppy disk is not used for longer time, many years it is recommended to perform few - about 4-5 complete readings before final one, which will save. I noticed it already years ago, and recently too. The explanation is that some tiny dirt film may accumulate on disk surface. Multiple readings will clean it pretty well. Even better if can do it with some another drive, so will not risk to dirt heads of main drive. Dirt may be even if you keep your floppies on really clean and dry place. I guess that some vapouring of plastic floppy cases iw the culprit.

Of course, cleaning floppy heads with alcohol is useful too, but not everyone can do it.

Activating Pasti verbose mode may help to see what is going on.