Help with a 3.5 floppy disk?

Question

I have very important information on a 3.5 floppy. (My computer at work doesn't have a writeable cd rom) anyways, today I tried to open it and it keeps saying that its not formated. I cann't reformat because I need the info on it. I tried it on my computer at home and its doing the same thing. Does anyone know how I can get the info off the disk. Help please

Answer 1

*slaps wootmaster*
it's past your bedtime, little boy, would you like me to read you a story?

(ok, I accept you're probably joking... but its not really funny and it's poor taste point-whoring like that when someone's in a genuine pickle. BTW i still HAVE my first CDRW drive - CDRs have only been a dominant form of storage since about '98, and let's face it, Zips were a bit of a joke)

ANYWAY
Take that disc, slide the write-protect tab to the SAFE (ie open, you can see through) position, and try it in as many drives and computers as you can until you can get your files off. Make a safe copy of them somewhere, throw the disc away (they're, like 0.20 each now? and once they start going bad, that's pretty much it - i used to keep duff ones for emergency use when they were actually expensive, but not any more) --- and copy them to a new one to finish the transfer.

If it doesn't work, do you still have SOME copy of them somewhere? You really, really, REALLY shouldn't have a single floppy disc as your only copy of something, particularly anything important ... they get corrupted SO easily. And as noted, windows XP raises drama if it realises it didn't personally format the blessed thing and the signal's a little weak from it.

THEN... either get yourself a USB thumbdrive (assuming your PC and the one at work both have accessible USB ports, and either Win ME/2000/XP or you have driver installation priveleges), as they are astonishingly cheap these days (like 39.99 for 2gb - 3 CD's worth - far, far less for something that'll hold like 50 floppies), or petition your work IT staff to put a CD burner in there for crying out loud. You shouldn't be forced to use old, unreliable tech like that when better alternatives exist and can be installed very easily (inserting a CD drive is a piece of very moist cake) and cheaply (like 14.99 or less, if they don't even have a couple spares sitting around unloved).

Answer 2

~ Are you sure that you don't have a backup copy anywhere?

~ If the floppy disk is your only backup copy in the world; say goodbye to your valuable data...

~ Backup should be on two or three, or even a hardcopy.

(",)

Answer 3

Ewww, sounds bad. On a 3.5 , the info is either there or gone, not recoverable. Sorry

Answer 4

thoes went out of style before I was born

Answer 5

I assume you are using Xp.. it is common

You can try this
http://www.jufsoft.com/badcopy/floppy_recovery.asp