Damaged Floppy Disks...

[vipin]

I want to know any tricks to repair damaged floppy disks. I have about 10 floppy disks and I had always kept them very carefully but now all have become damaged. I used to run scandisk on them and format them at regular intervals but now they all have become damaged mysteriously. Is this the normal wear & tear of floppy disks or are there any tricks available?
thanx

[The Fifth Horseman]

Normal. I had over 100 of these things several years ago, now the numbers thinned down to about 30 or so - and I don't use some of them cause they caught some nasty sort of virus too.

[platformer]

Norton Disk Tool for DOS can repair some damaged floppy disks. I think it is a program included with Norton Utilities for DOS.

[kleine777]

yeah its really wired i suppose its bet to keep it all on the hard disk

[The Fifth Horseman]

Norton Disk Tool for DOS can repair some damaged floppy disks. I think it is a program included with Norton Utilities for DOS.
Do not mistake data recovery for repair. NDT might block access to the damaged clusters, even recover _some_ of the data held in them, but it can't and won't repair physical damage of the disk surface.

In fact, floppies just degrade after a couple years - lost my Lords of the Realm (and original I bought a while back) that way, same goes for Battle Isle 1 and Scout Quartermaster. The floppies were used maybe twice, and then were kept safely in their respective boxes for around 6 years. Badsectors -> damaged floppies -> lost games.

[platformer]

Yes, it can revive a defective diskette, so you can format it even when before you couldn't.

[The Fifth Horseman]

If you check the size, you'll find it reduced - NDT has blocked the defective clusters from being written to, that's all.

There is no way it could repair actual physical damage to the disk surface - that just isn't possible.

[platformer]

Yes I know.

[The Fifth Horseman]

And, as a general safety precaution, I advise to dispose of floppies that got even a single badsector - you never know how long till they suffer a total breakdown.

HDD's with badsectors are a little different thing, but I suggest to not put any important files on them - might still be good for setting up an OS, though.

[vipin]

I have found a tool here:-

I am checking it to see if it works out for me!

Flobo Floppy Bad Sector Repair

http://www.floborecovery.com/downloads.htm
http://www.floborecovery.com/Flobo%20Flopp...pair%20Tool.exe (http://www.floborecovery.com/Flobo%20Floppy%20Repair%20Tool.exe)
FREEWARE! :ok:

[Titan]

Why would you run scandisk and format them every once in a while if you cared about them?
If you are to "save" a floppy as long as possible, you are to keep it locked away somewhere dark, in a room with low humidity and a temp between +8 - +15* C.

Floppy's aren't expencive anyway. Hell... i don't even have a floppy-drive anymore.. I have moved over to using memory-cards/USB-drives for any small files... I hardly even use CD's.

If you want to have a secure copy of something, you have to spread it.

Sugestion: Get 1 copy on a good CD (preferely a special one) as optical storage-mediums are more stable then magnetic, and keep it in a dark place. Get an external server-space, like some free webserver, and suff one copy there. Save the original in 2 copies on the hard-drive, as the odds of secorts failing on 2 places are smaller then just the one.

[Javaguy]

hmm.. thing is I have to use floppies for windows 3.1 as I cant get it to detect the CD drive..
mind you the DOS floppies I used were 14 years old and still working
floppies are unreliable like that :not_ok:

[platformer]

Have you tried to add this line in autoexec.bat :
device=c:\oakcdrom.sys /d:mscd000

and this line in config.sys :
mscdex=c:\mscdex.exe /d:mscd000

Make sure that you copy files oakcdrom.sys and mscdex.exe
in root of C drive or state the correct path of these files.
This is a procedure to get the cd-rom drive to work in ms-dos.
Maybe this is also the way to get it work in Win 3.1, and I think
also the way to get it work in Win 9x if nothing else helps.

[win98]

Why would you bother copy the data off and reformating floopys you have every now and then just run a surface scan.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Not so easy. When it's a bootdisk or OS installation disks, floppy imaging software is the only solution.