How do you unwrite protect a floppy disk?

Question

I have to transfer a some songs onto our other computer. It's kind of old and doesn't have any usb things, so I can't use a flash drive and I don't have the actual cd anymore, either. I have 2 floppy disks that are big enough to hold all the songs but when I put it into the other computer it said that the floppy disk was write protected, so I switched the little tab and put it back in, and it still said it was write protected. I tried it with the other one and the same thing happened. Can floppy disks be permanently write protected? I'm guessing I can't do anything about that then, eh?

Answer 1

You are doing it correctly. Just click the tab back and forth a few times and leave the hole closed. If it still doesn't work, the drive (not the disk) may be faulty or dusty. Use a camera lens blower brush on it.

Answer 2

Try putting a piece of scotch tape over the square hole that's on the left hand corner closest to you as you slide the disk in. Wrap it around the edge of the disk so it covers the hole on both sides. See if that makes any difference. The plastic slide should be positioned so you cannot see through for the disk to be writable. Think of it this way, to lock the disk you need a hole all the way through to get a padlock on to lock it. Block the hole so you could not get a padlock on and you can write.

It is possible for a floppy disk to be bad. Over the years I've had several fail and then you cannot read or write. What you could do is to go out and buy some new floppies.