Poll coming.
You know it, that phrase struck fear in your heart. You just put in a floppy disk (choose your size) and typed “CD A:”. There was some clicking and grinding sounds, then a few seconds of silence and then the dreaded “Abort, Retry, Fail?”
Everyone always gives “Retry” a chance, but it never succeeded. Or did it? Did it ever work for you?
I think it may have worked just once for me as I pulled out the disk and realized I stuck it in upside-down.
For the kids - back when typing “CD A:” was something you did several times a day on a computer, disks were 5" square, flexible and could easily be put into the drive in eight different directions, but of course, only one of them worked. (Or two ways, if you were stingy and punched holes in the sleeve so you could use both sides.)
Retry sometimes worked for me, especially if the floppy was only sort-of bad (or the floppy worked fine in every drive except this particular one…)
Forgot to insert the disk. Get A/R/T. Insert disk, retry, success.
My supplementary question would be - what was the difference between Abort and Fail?
It worked for the new dataspinners at Morgan Polysoft.
Abort means ‘cancel everything.’ Fail means ‘keep going without succeeding at this particular task.’
Retry works when removable media is involved, otherwise almost never.
I seem to remember some disks that would read after retrying a couple of times. This might have been more common in the early days than later with 3.5’’ floppies.
“Forgot to insert the disk” is the other use for Retry, as mentioned.
As others have said, Retry worked if you changed to the A:\ drive (or called it in some other way) but forgot to put the disk in, didn’t close it all the way or something else along those lines. Correct the issue and hit retry. If you didn’t mean to call up that drive (which would explain a disk not being in the drive), hit Abort or Fail and re-enter your command.
Yeah, maybe once or twice. Maybe there was just a speck of dust on the floppy that got moved off the second or third time around.
If I had forgotten to put the floppy in the drive, then yes, I could insert the floppy, press ‘R’ and be on my way. That, of course, is not exactly what you asked. MAYBE once or twice I was able eject a disk, reinsert it and be able to read it (and hastily copy the data to a new disk). It’s been a long time, though, so my memory is fuzzy.
If you know the cause of the problem, and it’s correctable, retry will work. It’s worked for me uncounted times.
I wouldnt bet my life on it having never worked, but I am pretty sure it never did. And I think I’ve seen the old “abort/retry/fail” message more times than I’ve had sex in my lifetime.
Having said that, I never meet a disk or crashed computer that I didn’t eventually suceed with getting up an running. Most rational folks give up after the umptempth time. I’d spend hours trying again and again and again until I got lucky just once (which is what I need to fix/move things).
Which I always found odd. Given how I thought computers and software work I would have guessed if it doesn’t work the first time, its not going the work the hundreth time either but that has never been my experience.
You should apply that same philosophy to trying to have sex. Try to even up that ratio. 
Makes sense, thank you.
I just decided to pull a Tim Allen and go the DIY route (I don’t think so Tim).
About 80% of the time when I saw this message it was because I had done something dumb (like not inserting the disk properly) so, yeah retry worked when I fixed the problem.
The other 20% the disk was boned.
Many people have mentioned this, and it is something I forgot about. I have seen the ARF message a couple times when I forgot to insert the disk and retry will work then. Although I have used the 5 1/4" disks, I am primarily from the 3.5" era, so putting it in incorrectly was not as easy.
When I posted originally, I had in mind a corrupted disk (or for some reason it is not readable). It sounds like some people still had success with this a few times.