NadFro said:
Hi,
I tried to restore files from 9 floppy disks that were done in backup
the first 4 were fine but when it gets to the 5th one it states not
found or not formatted what can I do to fix this am I also able to
restore the following floppys with out disk 5 in windows xp home
edition.
I can't find it right now, but I don't have a lot of time to do the
searching;you might. There is a "Refresh" program for floppies that can
often recover the data from them in usable format. I even have a copy of it
myself but can't find it either inthe limited time I have.
Floppy disks slowly lost their magnetic field strength over the space of
months. Back when people used them for backups, you had to "refresh" the
floppies every few months, at least once a year at the very most, to keep
the data current. That Refresh program was ued to read and write the data
back to the floppies in order to refresh them.
It makes ten consecutive attempts at each read until it gets a good read,
and once it does, it writes that data back onto the floppy, thus restoring
the magnetic integrity for those places on the floppies. Once the floppy is
bad enough though, nothing can recover it.
Nowadays floppies should never be used for storage for more than a month
or so. Most floppies, even the new ones, are actually very old and
"leftovers" from yesteryear. I have a boatload of them <g>!
Try to research the refresh program at your fav search engine and if you
can't locate one that does what I described, come on back and ask; I'll make
a note to look for the copy I have stashed away in my archives somewhere.
Meanwhile, if these might help:
http://askthegeek.kennyhart.com/2005/12/preserving-data-stored-on-floppy-disks.html
HTH
Pop`
