Re: [ARSCLIST] Floppy Disc Blues--aka data recovery software suggestions?

[John Ross <johnross@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

The first thing to try is moving the disk to another drive (which is 
to say, another computer), In my experience, some drives are better 
than others at reading marginal floppy disks. You might even want to 
spend $15 on a new Sony drive to replace one that's old and unreliable.

It's also worth the trouble to gently rap the edge of the disk on a 
tapletop. Sometimes there's a strategically placed piece of dust or 
other crud on the disk that gets in the way of the head reading the 
file allocation table or some other critical system file.

Failing that, try the free version of  Active@ Floppy Recovery 
(download from http://www.floppy-recovery.com/) or BadCopy Pro 
(http://www.jufsoft.com/badcopy/) and see what they can do for you. 
But try the hardware solutions first -- if the drive can't read a 
disk, the software won't do you much good.

John Ross



At  1/30/2007 12:12 PM, Andy Kolovos wrote:
> Anyone have recommendations for good, low cost (lets say circa $65 
> tops) data recovery software?  One of my coworkers has just 
> approached me with that rarest of things--a dead 3.5" floppy disc.
>
> It's amazing.  I've never known these things to fail before.
>
> Any help appreciated.