«

[Professor Oak]

Hello guys, I am having a spot of difficulty trying to extra data from my floppy disks which as a whole, is really infuriating me. I am using Windows Vista Service Pack 2, I have also tried Safe Mode. What do you think I should do?

[Scatty]

What is actually the difficulty there? Is it that the floppy disk in the drive cannot be accessed, some of the files can't be read or something else? If it's the first case, are you sure the floppies are meant for PC and not for example Amiga? In the second case, it might be that part of the disk has been damaged which is a usual thing to happy with floppies, and can be partially repaired with Scandisk though the data on the disk tends to get lost in any case which is irreparable.

[Professor Oak]

Originally Posted by Scatty

What is actually the difficulty there? Is it that the floppy disk in the drive cannot be accessed, some of the files can't be read or something else? If it's the first case, are you sure the floppies are meant for PC and not for example Amiga? In the second case, it might be that part of the disk has been damaged which is a usual thing to happy with floppies, and can be partially repaired with Scandisk though the data on the disk tends to get lost in any case which is irreparable.

The computer takes a long time to load up and usually, to get it to go to the next stage, I have to pull out the floppy disk and reinsert it into the computer. The discs state 'IBM PC' on them, so I sense they should be compatible.

[The Fifth Horseman]

But the disk contents are readable?
Have you tried with a relatively recently produced and formatted floppy, just for comparison?

[Professor Oak]

Originally Posted by The Fifth Horseman

But the disk contents are readable?
Have you tried with a relatively recently produced and formatted floppy, just for comparison?

Unfortunately not, I do not have any spare floppy disks on me so I can't really check.

[_r.u.s.s.]

sounds like a regular corrupted floppy to me

you just have to try it on another pc

[Eagle of Fire]

Russ is right. Floppies are infamous for dying on you in the worst possible time. When this happen it is almost impossible to recover the data on such a disk...

Good luck with that.

Moving to technical since this doesn't really belong in Troubleshooting.

[Professor Oak]

I've managed to finally be able to retrieve the files which I wanted, yet I hope that I won't have any more problems with it in future.

[Scatty]

If I was you I would backup the contents of the floppy disk(s) on a CD or something, since earlier or later a floppy disk will die and all the data on it lost. Nothing you could do about that, unfortunately, due to the technical nature of a floppy disk.