I have a floppy disk problem?

Question

okay so i saved all these things on my floppy disk and all of a sudden today it's saying i need to format the disk to open it or something.. but in order to do that i have to delete all the stuff.. which i don't have saved on the computer.. only on the disk. Is there anyway i could get around this?
or is there anyway i could view ALL of my recent documents not just the last 15 ect.?? so i can write it down and get the things again?

thanks in advance

Answer 1

Hi there:

I answer this question all the time.

HERE is a complete copy and paste of the last ANSWER I gave, which has all the information you need. As you state, you DO NOT WANT to format or scandisk or defrag, or anything that touches the tracks on your floppy !

SEE below:

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I lost my data I saved on floppy?

I saved some email messages on a floppy disc and brought it home from work and went to look at them on my computer at home and when I tried to open the floppy it said disco not formatted would you like to format now yes no. Have I lost my data? What should I do?
Additional Details

they are no longer in my email. just on floppy. If i take it back to work will it work there it did the other day.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

Hi there:

You have probably NOT lost any data.
Floppy copy and read problems are VERY common, and people have forgotten how to use them and maintain them.

I looked at the two other answers before mine. The first states that you lost everything. _ WRONG !!
The second states that you are using a different operating system ( WRONG -- a floppy is a floppy is floppy unless you are using a MAC vs PC, and even you would be smart enough to know that they are differnt !)
[[ Another rare situation is where you are using an OLD, 3 1/4 inch floppy on one machine, and a "new" 3 1/4 inch floppy drive on another machine, since the DRIVES Themselves, are different FORMATS ( the operating systems ( DOS, WIndows would be the same, and understand both formatting systems, but the mechanical heads and tracks are different ! ) There a dozens of different Floppy read/writers, and different FORMATs and sizes. The first IBM PC shipped with no harddrive, no floppy, and 16K of ram. There was a big DIN plug identical to the old keyboard plug, that you plugged in a cable that went to your Audio Cassette player, to load programs.. Then came the full height, single sided, low density, 5 1/2 inch floppy, then the high density, then the low density, two sided floppy, then the two sided High density floppy. Then all of these were replaced with the LOW density 3 1/4 inch floppy, and later the High Density 3 1/4 inch.
IFF you have a normal, modern 3 1/4 inch HIGH density disk writer at the office, and try to use it in the ancient 3 1/4 LOW density disk unit at home, the older low density machine will not know what the tracks on the floppy are - it will be reading two tinier high density tracks at the same time and get garbage data.
The odds of you having a 720 K floppy Machine at home, and a 1.44 Meg floppy Unit at work, are almost zero, but I thought I would mention it ! ) ]]
The second answer states to but the floppy BACK in the orginating computer, and this actually WOULD have a high success rate.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS TO " NOT " scandisk, or defrag or touch the floppy in ANY WAY.
Make your disk ' holy " at once, and prevent any writing of any kind, by flipping the little tab down so that BOTH HOLES on the corners are open ( holy disk ), so that your disk is protected from evil ( programs that WRITE or try to repair it- which would destroy YOUR data in the process of " repairing " the tracks -- they do not give a hoot about YOUR data, only in re-viving the useability of the disk -- BEWARE ! ! )

There are many precautions in using floppies. The first, is to ALWAYS FULL FORMAT ( not the silly "quick format" ) the disk before writing to it, even if it is NEW and out of the package...

The other problem is the LACK of use of ordinary floppy drive machines. They continually build up layers of dust, and when people DO go to use them, they gum up the heads with dirt. There are floppy cleaner disks available at most computer stores and dollar stores, and you SHOULD clean them if they have not been in use very much...

Another problem is the slight variation in the HEAD size, and the HEAD alignment, of different floppy machines. You can get slight differences in technologies, track sizes, and track placements, and although they "work" in other drives, the floppies used on one machine may be just a bit off-center written, and cause intermittent read/ write errors.

Finally - HOW TO RECOVER THE DATA

When you erase something, the data is still there. DOS/ Windows systems just take the first letter of the NAME of the file on the directory look up index on the outer rows of the disk, and change it to a "? " mark. This gives the system permission to write new data on top of the old files.

You have not erased or written anything on top, so that you just have to be able to READ the data that is already there.

If the floppy blank that you used is defective, with BAD BLOCKS or areas of the disk that will not magnetize, then when you WROTE the data, there may be tiny areas of the data that are lost. THE WORST place for this to happen, is in the DIRECTORY, outer tracks, since this is where the computer looks to see what files are on the disk. If there is a problem in the outer tracks, the computer will refuse to look further.

There are programs that IGNORE standard look-up procedures, and just scan the entire disk anyway, and look at what is there.
The programs examine the valid data, and fill in any bad sectors or bits, to give you a COMPLETE file, that DOS/Windows can see, and use. It may have a bit of garble in TEXT , for example, where the repair program filled in missing computer binary Zeros and Ones to make what DOS/ Windows " sees" as a ' complete' file, but most of the data you want would be there.

The Method I would use would be :
1/ WRITE PROTECT YOUR FLOPPY IMMEDIATELY ! (holy disk)
2/ use a floppy cleaner in your home machine, and insert and re-insert the disk to see if by luck you get a good alignment.
3/Take the floppy back to work, and again, use the floppy cleaner, and insert - re- insert hoping to get a single, valid READ. If you get a read, back it up on the harddrive, and get a new floppy, reformat it, and make a new copy.
4/ At home or office, use the utilities below - there are FREE download " trials" and a completely FREE download repair utility that has very high ratings.

Next time, Full format first. Use a floppy cleaner disk. Make a backup of the backup!

Here are the links:

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/pcinspector...
FREE - Excellent ratings !!!!

http://www.howtodothings.com/computers/a...
Tips on USING floppies, and 3 PAY for programs $40 to $70


http://www.bmtmicro.com/bmtcatalog/win/r...
3 PAY FOR programs about $20

You should have your data back in short order!

Hope this helps

robin

Source(s):
I have a tiny website
kidbots.com
which causes me to have hundreds of old computers, most with floppies. I have to deal with them constantly.



Asker's Rating:
Thank you very much. I'll have to read it over and over to soak it in. I really want this data back.


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As you can see by the many possibilities above, you will likely
get most or all of your data back if you follow the steps above.

To see another typical answer with slightly different ideas, see:

ANOTHER ANSWER WITH INFO LINK
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AsjDY3UD6FFiGJBSUrjpwbbsy6IX?qid=20060718171127AA0Rufo

Good luck !
Make copies of floppies, and rotate them - always FORMAT, FULL, before saving data!

robin

Answer 2

Did you organize the files on the floppy disk? I'm wondering if you created directories on the floppy and then loaded files into the directories in an orderly fashion. It is always a good idea to do it that way so you have a method of keeping track of what is on the floppy disk. If you want to see the entire contents of the floppy go to, My Computer>Tic on the floppy drive letter, or go to the Windows Explorer and tic on the floppy drive. There are also "Locks" on the floppy disks themselves to protect them from getting written to accidentally. Make sure that the disk isn't locked. The lock is located on the bottom side of the floppy disk. As it faces you, bottom of the disk up, on the lower left hand corner there is a sliding plastic switch. One position locks the disk from being written to.

Answer 3

I don't really think there's anything you can do, but to be frank, I'm not much of a floppy disk person.
I will suggest that you invest in a USB Flash drive though. Much more reliable and they're becoming more and more cheap. And if you're just saving documents on it, you won't need that much space.
Also, you should probably keep all necessary documents on the computer until their purpose is fulfilled. Ex: if you write a paper, don't delete it until you get the paper back graded.

Answer 4

Floppy drives themselves fail usually. i could first be sure no count if this is the floppy disk or thechronic. in case you could, try examining the disk from yet another workstation's floppychronic. Do you pay attention thechronic spin up once you insert the disk? If not, your ability connection would be undesirable. yet another area of failure on a floppychronic is the 34 pin IDE cable. If not firmly seated on the motherboard or floppychronic, it may lose connection on a variety of of of the pins and not be completely useful, in basic terms 'useful' adequate for the workstation to 'see' it yet not study from it.

Answer 5

Try checking the disk on another computers floppy drive if it says the same thing. Then chances are the disk is failing and you probably won't be able to recover them unless you send it off or pay someone to do it for you...Thanks