Fix an "unformatted" floppy?

[JB]

For years I have saved correspondence and important papers to 3.5" floppies.

I tried to recover an important letter today and my 'puter said that disk was not formatted and wouldn't read it.

All of the other floppies were okay and readable.

Is there a way to "repair" that floppy?

 

[ndemge]

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My first guess is that it is toast.

Floppies degrade over time and eventually loose whats on them.

I'd get those other docs backed up to: CD, Hard Drive, and PRINT THEM. depending on how important they are.



But to go back to the question, it may be that parts of the data is there, or all the data, but the FAT table on the floppy is bad.... I await i386's comments.

whatever you do, don't let it format.
maybe an older version of dos may be able to retreive it.
-I do have an old 286 with dos 5.0 sitting at my brother's house. He used it as a terminal into his pbx, it's been sitting dorment for years awaiting a reason to wake up.

 

[rickdb1boat]

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You could run a scandisk on it and see what comes up. It may be able to repair sectors of the disk and make it readable...

 

[Xcusme]

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Another possibility.....some floppy drives write the data to a floppy that can't be read on another floppy drive. It's all about the rotational speed and registration of the heads of the drive. You probably dont have the original floppy drive to test this out , but you can try different computers. Just be sure to flip the write protect window on the floppy to prevent any writting to the media until you can read the FAT (contents).....

Another option... link

 

[mscher]

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Here is what I would try.

1. Try to use the Windows command line utility "diskcopy" to make a saved copy(s) of the diskette. This utility copies by disk sector and not by file, so at best you could have an accurate copy of the disk.

2. Working with the copy of the disk, use chkdsk as others have suggested, or one of the many disk utilities like Norton Disk Doctor. You may be able to recover some or all of the files.

Good luck

 

[JB]

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Unable to get scandisk to scan A:, same with diskcopy and chkdsc. :'(

 

[i386]

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I've always considered them toast when they do that. Never trust a floppy. I find them so unreliable that when I'd put a driver on disk to take to a customer's site, I'd do it on a couple disks just in case it was bad when I got there.

But anyway. For hard drives, I have had success with what xcuseme said. For floppies I've seen people recommend this one though I've never tried it myself.

Another option is a data recovery service like Drive Savers. They can recover anything that's recoverable but they are not cheap. Check your home owners insurance policy for data loss if you go that route. Also if you think you might use a recovery service don't do anything else to the floppy. It'll increase your chances they can save it.

Good luck JB.

 

[MRS]

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JB, what i386 said you have to go to a data recovery company check your phone book. I did not think anybody kep any thing on flopies any more but what you should do is get them off the flopies and on to cd.s or dvd.s.....