It happens at the worst of times. The dreaded C:13:01, Format or Drive Error. There have been many guesses as to why this happens. The most popular being the metal disk shutter gets bent and when ejected, snags the drive heads and damages them. While this may be the case in some situations, I have noticed that the failure is much more complex than that. The problem I see sometimes is a portion of the drive fails, causing the heads to not lift from the disk surface when they are supposed to. With the heads in the way of the disk during the eject operation, the disk snags the heads, creating a terminal failure of the drive.
I do suggest the use of plastic shutter floppies so they wont become bent but have noticed that the failure sequence, in most cases is different. If you drop your camera, push eject. If the disk does not fly out like normal, push the disk back in, remove the battery and get it to me for service as fast as you can. You can save $100 by not pulling on the disk. Dont use business cards, knives or anything to "help" it out. You will only cost yourself more money.
Another cause of failure is shock related damage from being dropped. Generally, the shock breaks one or more of the small precision parts within the drive.
Because Sony does not sell individual parts for the drive, service centers must replace the entire drive assembly. The drives are made for Sony only and not available to the open market.
On the CD models of the camera, the C:13:01 error is not something that goes unseen. This can be repaired here for a lot less than Sony centers.
For The "What To Do First" or "Now What!" Question
1. If you get the disk error message and your camera has the little button cell battery, remove this along with the main battery for a few hours. Replace the button cell with a fresh one, install the main battery and try the camera. Although I have never seen this fix a camera, people do report that it has worked. It cant hurt to try it.
2. If your camera does not have a button cell battery, remove the main battery for greater than 24 hours. Reinstall the main battery and try it. I have also heard this has worked for some people. The camera OS is maintained by a capacitor within the camera. This capacitor acts as a battery for some time so you are letting it discharge during this 24 hour wait time.
3. You should try a fresh, right out of the box new disk. Sometimes disks can become bad so you should try a brand new one to see if this is the problem.
4. Try a head cleaning diskette. I use the wet type but dont put the liquid drops on it. I have found that the drops create so much surface tension between the cleaner and the heads in the camera that the added torque stalls the drive motor. Make sure to use it dry.
5. On the CD units, I have an affordable fix for the cameras with the grinder C:13:01 error. The price through Sony is about $225 once all of the shipping charges are tacked on. My price is much less than that. Be sure to clean the laser lens before deciding the camera needs service. DONT touch the laser lens. Read the manual about this.
6. I have been asked about why the floppy drive seems to become noisy over time. Inside the drive, the heads run back and forth on 2 rails. These rails become dry after a while and the head mount starts to have a dry chatter which increases the noise level a bit. The drive may still work just fine like this. First, dont spray anything into the drive to try to eliminate this chatter. If you do, it will ruin the drive. There are two things that can be done. First, you can do nothing since it is not a real serious problem. Second, you can send it to me and I will disassemble and lubricate the rails. A good cleaning of the camera is always included in my price.
7. The most important thing is to not loose your cool. Everything, including us breaks. Sony had a great idea using the floppy and CD platform and it still a good one. Just like a car, home or anything else, your camera will need service every now and then. When compaired to film and processing, you have a good deal going and some service expense should be expected.
8. If you do all of this and still cant get the camera to work, it needs to be repaired. See the contact information above for instructions click the link below or go to the "Service" section of the site.
