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General discussion

Problems accessing Floppy disk

Dec 29, 2006 3:52AM PST

Hello,
I have a word document on a floppy. Somebody worked on it and saved it without problems. I got the floppy but I cannot copy the word document, it says this:

Image: http://www.kancelarijahatipovic.com/images/diskError.jpg

So, in english, it says basically that the Windows cannot read from the source disk. So what do I have to do here?

There must be a way, a utility that can help me recover the damaged floppy? Does anyone have advice?

Regards,
Mirza

Discussion is locked

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Re: problems accessing floppy disc
Dec 29, 2006 4:04AM PST

Mirza,

Floppies are notoriously unreliable, and can fail like this on any moment.

The things to try:
1. Ask the 'somebody' if he happens to have a copy on his hard disk and ask him to copy it to another floppy, a USB-stick or simply mail it.
2. Run a scandisk (that's Windows 98/ME language, the Windows XP instruction is in http://8help.osu.edu/1721.html) to recover the bad sectors on the floppy (if possible).

If both succeed you can use the copy from #1; the diskette might still be usable if there are only a few bad sectors. Are there many bad sectors, you better throw it away.
If #1 doesn't work and #2 works, you're probably left with a 'hole' in the Word document, but just as well it might be a critical hole making large parts of the document unaccessible.
If #1 doesn't work and #2 says the disk is totally unusable (bad sector in critical area, or a message like that), there's nothing you can do but sit and cry. Then go back to the last backup you and your friend have.

Having only ONE copy of a file on a floppy is equivalent to having a good chance of losing it. Your choice. Not mine.

Hope this helps.


Kees

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thanks
Dec 29, 2006 9:23PM PST

many many thanks, it helped, the recovery went well Happy youre one of my heres from this day on!

regards,
mirza

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(NT) Glad I could help. An unexpected success.
Dec 30, 2006 6:52AM PST