Floppy Disk Data Recovery

Is there any way to access degraded files on a floppy disk? I bought a floppy disk drive yesterday, and it works with several of my old floppies, but it will not recover a file from one disk, that I want very badly. I just get this message:

Woa! Did you use the time machine to travel back and buy one? I'm just kidding....hmm...well back in the day sometimes "blowing" on them (with the door sliding thing (IDK what to call it the metal piece at the top)) and rotating the disc would get some "dirt" off the film and sometimes work...try that, by blowing lightly on the "black film disc" by sliding the metal door across and exposing it to your breath....I know sounds weird but even nintendo 64 cartridges magically worked better after "blowing some air" over the chip/connector....

Also, try another operating system like linux, sometimes my usb drive won't read in win7 but better in linux mint? depends on the format of the disc i guess (ntfs etc)....

Forgot to mention, use a small screw driver (flat head) or pen (not pencil b/c lead can break) to rotate the center metal disc when blowing on the film....also sometimes even if you rotate the disc a little and put it back in (like a CD with a scratch) it may magically read better by "skipping" the scratched part and not reading it as an error.....

Like the massive 3.5 I think was the size compared to the 1.44? Those things were huge lol.....how times have changed...

Wow yea that's before my time I was still using floppy's till the greatest space saving invention for computers was introduced bum bum bah!!!!!! (THE FLASH DRIVE) which really took off in the early 2000's. Best usb invention (and really the grandfather of the modern mp3 player (which also uses flash)...whoever came up with it was a genius imo!

Yup now you can get another form called SSD ( solid state disk) which is a type of flash memory hard drive for your computer....it is faster for gaming/(read/write) and also reliable and not prone to risk from falling/magnets...

only bad thing is they are expensive compared to traditional hard drives...

I find 16gb does it for me! I have 3 of those 16gb but never have one completely full lol....

Yes - first there was the 8-inch disk - then, the 5.25-inch disk ( same type packaging the 8-inch disk, but smaller ) - then, the 3.5-inch disk ( the new package design better protected the disk ).

And now - all of them are [ virtually ] obsolete...

You might look for an old computer that used floppies. Just don't connect it to the internet. There are commercial companies that recover data, but that's an expensive option.

That's still a lot of storage, figuring one GB can do this kind of storage. (Found online)

How many books can be stored on one GB?

“A character is represented by 8 bits” i.e. each character takes about 8 bits. Please note that this problem can be solved only by making few assumptions and your solution depends on the kind of assumptions you make.

Let’s solve the problem now:
•we know 1 byte = 8 bits (Ref. table at the end of this post) ◦1 GB (giga byte) = 1073741824 bytes (≈ 109 bytes) [read it as, 10 power 9]
◦1 GB = 8 * 109 bits

•Now assume on an average every word is comprised of 5 characters
•Assume every page has about 10 lines and each line has about 20 words => 200 words per page
•Number of characters in each page => 5*200 = 1000 characters per page
•Assume every book has about 300 pages => 1000*300 = 300000 characters per book
•Now that every book has about 300,000 characters. The amount of memory taken by each book is ◦300,000 * 8 = 2400000 bits (≈24*105 bits of space)
◦The above principle states that each book takes about 24*105 bits of space

•Now, how many books can be stored in 1 GB hard drive? ◦(8 * 109 )/ (24*105) ≈ 3333.33 books

Back in the day they had sector editors and different tools. You should inquire on Cnet or Bleeping Computers because this is not a forum with the same expertise.

If an older computer that came with a floppy drive installed can't read it, it's trash. Life in the digital age... nothing good is forever, yet let one raunchy photo get loose and it's out there forever

Kilobyte = 1024 bytes

Megabyte = 1024 Kilobytes = 1024 x 1024 bytes = 1,048,576 bytes

Gigabyte = 1024 Megabytes = 1024 x 1024 x 1024 bytes = 1,073,741,824 bytes

Terabyte = 1024 Gigabytes = 1024 x 1024 x 1024 x 1024 bytes = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes

Yes find a 486 or a 386 somewhere.