# Can't read Floppy disk files!



## TonyE (Aug 1, 2007)

I have some very important information on some old floppy 3.5 disks; I tried to open today and the information looks like Chinese writing. I tried to open them in different options Word...note pad...etc... But it all looks like Chinese writing. How can I retreive my information? 

Please Help! :help:


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## Ernie (Jul 22, 2007)

It's likely you won't be able to. If they were pure ASCII you might be ok and just lose a little of the data, but if it's in some other format (or worse, compressed) then you've simply lost the data. There's programs called "sector editors" which might help you. Do a google search and depending upon your level of expertise, you might be able to figure out a way to salvage at least some of that information.

Floppy disks are cheap plastic with magnetic particles on them. They degrade over time unless stored in very precise conditions (cold). The magnetic particles don't stay in the same place (they jump around slightly) and over time they drift out of position enough to make the data unreadable.

There is no permanent storage for digital data. Optical (CD/DVD) has a longer shelf life, but most of the cheap material they sell for burning CDs becomes degraded enough to lose some of your data. If it's important, you need to periodically schedule its transfer to new media, or print it out.


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## Gary in ohio (May 11, 2002)

what program created the files? IF you dont have that program then your most than likely out of luck.


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## OntarioMan (Feb 11, 2007)

Most utilities which work on hard drives will work on floppies as well : chkdsk, defrag, etc. etc.

If the data on the floppy is unreadable, you may still be able to recover some/all of it. 

What type of data is stored on the floppy? As Gary mentioned : sometimes in order to read/use the date, you need the program which created it.

I'd also agree that storing anything important on a floppy is a bad idea - they have a very short lifespan - and are generally wonky regardless of how old they are.


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## Stann (Jan 2, 2005)

If the data is valuable, you can use a data recovery service. If not too valuable, you can purchase data recovery software. Google "data recovery". I've used ONTRACK and they're very good and appear ethical.
http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/

You can also give them a call for free advice. Understand that the more an inexperienced person plays with a faulty disk the more likely that more will be lost.


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## Gary in ohio (May 11, 2002)

Once we get the program that wrote the data we can help with recover. You do need to keep in mind that Floppy disk were never designed for long term storage. 1-3 years MAX without refresh. CDRW are also not good long term storage. 3-7 years. There is really no consumer class long term data storage. Most commercial storage system use refresh method to keep data alive. Tapes data is re-written to keep it valid and readable.


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## Ernie (Jul 22, 2007)

A little information about the Windows file storage system ...

There is a section reserved for file allocation. Think of it like the card catalog at your library. It tells you what files are located where on the disk. Only in this library, they ONLY give you access to the card catalog and then go fetch the book for you.

Often minute corruption will occur in a file and it isn't a big deal. The letter C gets changed to an R, etc. Eventually though the corruption will reach that file allocation table and destroy it. Going back to the library description, you now have no card catalog and the librarians refuse to go browsing through the shelves to retrieve the book that you are certain is there.

When the disk itself becomes unreadable (not just the file), then you know the corruption is bad enough to have rendered the file allocation table useless. Another good analogy would be that of a treasure map ... if you can't read the map, you can't get the treasure.

Those places that advertise disk recovery often go in and use sector editors to look through the data (like avoiding the librarians and going straight to the shelves). The book might be there, or it might not be ... you don't know until you've paid the fee whether or not they're going to find anything usable.


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## TonyE (Aug 1, 2007)

The program that I used I believe was mircosoft works, a 1995 windows program. I am trying to open it on window XP with no luck.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

If the documents are Works 6.0 or 7.0 you should be able to follow these instructions to open them with Word:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HP011881161033.aspx


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