Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations strongm on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

floppy error

Status
Not open for further replies.

clorbach

Technical User
May 25, 2005
2
US
when I put a floppy disk into the drive A it comes up with an error. disk is not formatted. I replaced the drive to see if it was a hardware problem it worked at first and then it gave the same error. Does any one know a solution for this.
 
clorbach
Probably a whole load of bad disks.
Unfortunately floppy disks are very unreliable and fail on a regular basis.
Sometimes I end up thowing several floppies before I find one that formats.
Martin

We like members to GIVE and not just TAKE.
Participate and help others.
 
I have a sony floppy drive that gives me a error of disk is not formatted. I put a new floppy disk in and go to format and another error pops up. Windows is unable to format disk. Does any one know why this could be.
 
First i would make sure the floppy drive is connected properly. Also go to device manager and make sure there is no problem showing there.
Sometimes its as simple as rebooting the computer, worth trying.

After that it would be a matter of trying different brands of floppies as they are notoriously unstable to begin with.
I have a test bench with several different setups. Often i have to use win 98 boot disks and often i have to try 3 or 4 different boot disks until i find one that will work. But the other boot disks that wouldnt work will work on another computer so i keep them all.


Good advice + great people = tek-tips
 
clorbach, like both the members have stated, floppies are highly unreliable media. Sometimes there are 3 working out of a box of 10.

Do you want to read the floppy content of write into it?

I have had luck with some media which Windows NT/2000/XP rejected on a Windows 98 system. This might or might not have technical reason...but what has sometimes helped me recover data when I was using floppies.

Hope you get to access your floppies.

 
thunderthor:
Win 98 and XP format differently (something about a bit that one has, and the other doesn't).

clorbach:
I've found that once you get a "unformatted" error, the next disk probably will also until you exit Windows Explorer and go back in.

If you are desperate for a floppy, take a large magnet (preferably in a different room) and rub it all over the disk. Then it will definitly need formatting. Sort of an instant "media restore"!
 

micker377:
Thanks for the info. I was merely referring to the possibility of being able to access data in case there was data to be retrieved.

 
clorbach, what os are you using?


Good advice + great people = tek-tips
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top