Backing up a large amount of Floppies...What should I do.....

[Tim Slattery]

Does XP read FAT 12 without any tweeking? Not sure it does.

Absolutely it does! That's the *only* file system used for floppies in
any Windows system, from 1.0 to XP.

 

[Tim Slattery]

Ok, rephrased, Diskettes are FAT32

NO! Floppy disks use FAT12.

 

[Bob I]

The first link/issue is one of the media descriptor byte being
incorrectly set, and is correctable.
The second link/issue only relates to Formatting the floppy and doesn't
apply because he wants read them.
No reason to doom the endeavor in my book.

 

[Bob I]

Acknowledged typo on that

NO! Floppy disks use FAT12.

 

[Ron Martell]

What I /meant/ to say is, whatever the file format of the floppy, XP will
probably not read any floppy that was made on W95 or previous....that's
been my experience.....

Had some floppies brought in yesterday that were created in 1993 using
MS-DOS 6.22 using 720K 3.5 inch diskettes.

Windows XP had no problems reading the disks and copying off the
contents. Couldn't do diddly-squat with regard to running any of the
executables on the disks, but was able to copy them. Put them all
onto a CDR disk and gave them back to the customer (which was exactly
what he wanted done).

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

The first link/issue is one of the media descriptor byte being
incorrectly set,

Yes.


and is correctable.

Correctable only by formatting floppies under Windows XP, then copying the
old diskettes to the newly formatted ones on a computer running an older
version of Windows/DOS.

The second link/issue only relates to Formatting the floppy and
doesn't apply because he wants read them.

It applies in the sense that it's background information about "Floppy Disk
Formats That Are Supported in Windows XP."

No reason to doom the endeavor in my book.

I didn't say anything about condemning the endeavor. If he wants to go to
the trouble of copying a lot of diskettes first, he can do it. But note that
some of these diskettes are 5-1/4". He's very likely going to have trouble
finding a Windows XP computer with a 5-1/4" diskette drive, and he's
probably also going to have trouble finding blank 5-1/4" disketters to copy
them to.

 

[cmgray74]

All,
I did about 12 diskettes last night in a little over 50 minutes. Each
Disk takes about 3 minutes or so to read. So reading the disk is the
biggest hangup. In some cases I copied the software to my drive
directly and then injected it into the image, as this is faster then
the tool just trying to make a exact copy of the whole diskette. This
injection method is faster as many of my diskettes are composed of zip
files from BBS boards or shareware Companies and do not completely fill
the diskette. Data integrity is running about 80% or so. Meaning about
80% of the data is recoverable/readable. You can really see where
buying good disks ($$$), in some cases, paid off . My Copyrighted
software, as well as the zip shareware files, seem to work as a mounted
diskette as good as the originals.

Believe it or not I had only one piece of software, out of the 80% that
was readable, not run at all. Most actually ran fine and I ran an old
Spiderman game from 1991 just fine. Also Prince of Persia came up and
ran just fine to. I had one piece of software that ran like it was on
adrenalin but it ran fine other then that.

The WinImage delivered everything it claims and I plan on registering
this software on my next pay day. I am software engineer so I support
my industry

The only thing I see as a negative so far on this project is the time
its going to take and floppy data integrity. Once the project is done
though I will have more room in my office and a small easily accessible
DVD\CD with many of my old favorites!

Thanks for the help and suggestions,
Chris
SolomonMan

 

[Talahassee]

Had some floppies brought in yesterday that were created in 1993 using
MS-DOS 6.22 using 720K 3.5 inch diskettes.

Windows XP had no problems reading the disks and copying off the
contents. Couldn't do diddly-squat with regard to running any of the
executables on the disks, but was able to copy them.

That has been my experience as well. I now have roughly 200 floppies
of various sizes, HDD, 2DD. I format them when I can, recycle some.
Some clients still want Win 98 installs, and so I give them a boot
disk with Win 98 files on it. Doesn't happen a lot, but it happens.

I recently was given one of the flat, square, 3" high 10" by 10"
plastic covered boxes that is 2 rows of floppy disks, FULL of old
programs, Norton, Windows 3.1, etc. Nothing would read. NOTHING. I
mentioned to the customer they were "toast." Asked him if-- by any
chance-- he'd stored the disks near a magnet, a speaker, ??

He said he'd just had his phone sitting on top of the box for a year
or so. "Does that count."

Um, yeah, "that counts."

And he'd moved them from in front of his stereo speaker, where they'd
been for a year or two.

(stereo speakers next to the computer? "" Whatever !!"" )

Needless to say, the whole box of floppies went into the garbage. But
the box was nice!


Tallahassee



Put them all