Floppy disk crisis!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Kelly
  • Start date Start date
K

Kelly

Hello

Not sure if this is the right place to ask?

I have a floppy disk, which has Word and Excel files on
it. I've been using it for a while without problems.

The last time I saved something onto it (nothing unusual)
was on my home PC (Windows XP) at the weekend. Now, in
the office (Windows XP again), when I try to use it, it
tells me that the disk is not formatted, or might be
formatted for a Mac, and asks me if I want to format it.

It's really important that I get to the files that are on
the disk. Can anyone tell me (in idiot-proof terms!) what
the problem might be, or how I could fix it??

Thanks!
Kelly
 
Have you made any changes recently, like going from FAT32 to NTFS?
Are both home and office machines using the same type?
 
Try reading from a DOS prompt (Start->Run->(type "cmd", no quotes). I had a
similar problem the other day, couldn't read the A: drive from notepad, so I
went to a prompt an typed:

notepad a:\file.txt

....worked fine.

HTH

Jim
 
-----Original Message-----
Hello

Not sure if this is the right place to ask?

I have a floppy disk, which has Word and Excel files on
it. I've been using it for a while without problems.

The last time I saved something onto it (nothing unusual)
was on my home PC (Windows XP) at the weekend. Now, in
the office (Windows XP again), when I try to use it, it
tells me that the disk is not formatted, or might be
formatted for a Mac, and asks me if I want to format it.

It's really important that I get to the files that are on
the disk. Can anyone tell me (in idiot-proof terms!) what
the problem might be, or how I could fix it??

Thanks!
Kelly
.
Click to expand...
Hello!
At first try the floppy in another machine (just one). If
neither machine properly recognizes your disk,then it may
be a physical problem or has been erased. In this case,
the best hope is to use Norton Utilities or a similar
high-powered product to retrieve/save any data on the disk.
When you see one of these messages, clicking "OK" (or
Continue, etc.) will erase all information on the disk,
rendering it unrecoverable.
Good luck,
ssg
pronetworks.org
 
Norton utilities Disk Doctor "NDD" may be able to restore
that. Sounds like the fat sector is bad. Norton can
access the back-up copy on the disk!
 
|
| >-----Original Message-----
| >Have you made any changes recently, like going from FAT32
| to NTFS?
| >Are both home and office machines using the same type?
| >
| >--
| >Good Luck,
| >Jerry
| >
|
| Thanks for the suggestion. I have to admit I only
| understand as far as 'Have you...', though!
|
| As far as I know, I haven't done anything out of the
| ordinary to it at all. Certainly not consciously, anyway.
|
| I'll try the disk at home this evening and see if anything
| different happens there.

Changing from FAT32 to NTFS — or the reverse — shouldn't affect a floppy.
That's FAT12 and the system should be able to read it no matter which filing
system XP uses.

Just because XP tells you the floppy is unreadable doesn't necessarily mean that
it is. It just means that XP can't read it at that particular moment in time.
WinXP has very few shortcomings IMHO, but its notoriously shaky ability to deal
with floppies is certainly one.

Larc



§§§ - Please raise temperature of mail to reply by e-mail - §§§
 
A suggestion for the future. Since floppy disks are a great deal of
problems for Windows XP (as evidenced by all the posts to the various XP
newsgroups) and just a royal pain in general when data is lost, I use three
methods to transport data from work to home and vice-versa.

1. When I do use a floppy for transfer, I make sure that I create a copy
first on my source machine's hard disk drive and then copy it to the floppy.
If I really need the data at home, I sometimes copy it from two different
work machines to two different floppies.

2. The method I use most is this: I have purchased two Compact Flash USB
readers. Installed one on my work computer and one on my home computer. I
have a 512 MB and a 1 GB Compact flash card that I transfer my data between
work and home information on so that I can transport just a little memory
chip and not have to worry about floppies being damaged. Total cost for the
512 MB card and the two readers was under $150.00 and is much more reliable
than floppies. This is also cheaper (and smaller to carry around) than
using the USB thumb drives since if you fill one card you can use another
one, unlike the fixed memory in the thumb drives.

3. I use CD-Rs or CD-RWs to transport the data. More expensive in the long
run, especially if CD-Rs are used for small amounts of information and they
are finalized by the writer. They are also generally slower in data
transfer unless you drag and drop to the drives (must have compatible
software on each end to do this.)

Good luck
 
Kelly said:
The last time I saved something onto it (nothing unusual)
was on my home PC (Windows XP) at the weekend. Now, in
the office (Windows XP again), when I try to use it, it
tells me that the disk is not formatted, or might be
formatted for a Mac, and asks me if I want to format it.

It's really important that I get to the files that are on
the disk. Can anyone tell me (in idiot-proof terms!) what
the problem might be, or how I could fix it??
Click to expand...

The most likely thing is incompatibility of drives with the specific
floppy used. These days floppy drives are not well calibrated to
standard. Try a different machine and see if it reads. If not you will
probably need to go home and make a fresh floppy on a different disk
(and make sure it is correctly written and readable on the Home machine)
 
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