Recover data from 720Kb Floppy - Long Shot.

[stduc]

I've been asked to do my best to get some data off a 720Kb floppy. Windows says it's not formatted.

I've looked at a load of stuff on the net from winhex to diskedit. I have norton so I tried that.

Norton fell over with a divide by zero error - LOL
Everything else either also said the disk was not formatted, or that there were no files.

I found nothing that would somehow force the floppy drive to display the data sector by sector.

I am confident that the disk did once have data on it.

If anyone has any suggestions or can point me at any software that may help I would be grateful.

 

[eyec]

first try to set your floppy disc controller (in your bios to 720 vs 1.44 and see if you can read it.

if so, then save the files to your hard drive.

 

[stduc]

Tried that - no difference

 

[edfair]

Suggest that you attempt to find some older machines to try on. And under DOS, not windows.
Older floppy drives might help, especially if you can find a machine with a 720.


Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[stduc]

Perhaps I should clarify.

I was given a few of these disks to recover. They contain old V2 wordstar files.

Most copied just fine. One needed the help of norton diskedit but the last one is proving very recalciltrant.

The owner had warned me that they remembered having a problem writing that disk - but then forgot all about it for 10 or 15 years! lol

I suspect that the FATs are gone and the file wanted is erased - but obviosly still there at the sector level.

I am hoping against hope to find a program that will read a disk even though windows and many programs either say disk not found in drive or no files found. The program that said no files found was a file copy progam - so the disk is readable - but nothing in the directory. Hence I need a sector copier.

 

[eyec]

if you have access to Knoppix try recovering the file that way.

 

[bygeek]

You could try this:

http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/download.htm

 

[stduc]

Thanks for everyones help. No joy yet though. Still everything says the disk is unformatted. Including pcinspector - which also fell over with a divide by zero overflow error.

I may see if my AMSTRAD PPC640 still works! LOL - If I can make the time at the weekend. Now - where did I put it?

 

[TheMisio]

stduc

Hi there,

Try a piece of software used long time ago to copy protected disks. The application is free. Please note that it is DOS based, but it's got quite clear layout.
The application reads floppies bit by bit, so it may be something you need.
It may me quite cumbersome to use it at first. Let me know if you have any problems. Download zipped file from here:

http://phantom.sannata.ru/software/copy.all/Diskdupe.70/

Good luck.

Michael

 

[stduc]

Thanks - that DiskDupe looks a handy tool to keep in the toolbox. However unfortunately it failed with
Error 202. Disk error. Bad address mark.
I tried all disk format options, from 320k to 720k
The diagnose option hung.

 

[dkediger]

At this point, if the data on the disk is truly needed, I would check the commercial data recovery services to see if they deal with floppies rather than continuing to work with it.

Floppies were notoriously tempermental and sensitive to heat, dust, electric fields, and drive alignments.

 

[TheMisio]

stduc

Sorry to hear this did not work. Seems like the disk is corrupt. Have you tried getdataback? I think it can recover floppies as well.
I think you can use trial version. Still, should be much cheaper than commercial recovery companies....

Good luck

Michael

 

[terrytree]

you can try EASEUS DataRecoveryWizard

http://www.easeus.com/

 

[diogenes10]

A couple of years ago I was researching names of various recovery products.

I think these two were dos based, don't know if they would help:

BadCopyPro
active@UNERASER for dos

 

[diogenes10]

Two discussions I found with google:

http://www.ibo-business.com/ibo-floppy-recovery-report.htm

http://users.iafrica.com/c/cq/cquirke/fixrdisk.htm

 

[Steve67890]

URGENTRECOVERY® Professional can detect drives even if they are not visible in explorer, supports long filenames as well as compressed and fragmented files. The full directory structure of the drive is displayed (Even on NTFS Drives where it is recoverable) and the built in search feature makes finding files much easier. The Recovery Wizard allows even novice users to successfully recover lost data.

http://www.urgentrecovery.com

 

[stduc]

[blue]Steve67890 [/blue] - I see you multiple posted! OK - I'll give it a try - but remember we are talking single sided floppy here that is NEITHER DOS or Windows compatible.

I did contact some data recovery firms but they all said it can't be done.

I will give URGENTRECOVERY a go and post back.

 

[stduc]

URGENTRECOVERY didn't even see the floppy! When I forced it to use physical, rather than logical drives it crashed with a floating point error!

 

[DaveFarquhar]

The old Norton Utilities for DOS (I'm talking like version 8 or 9) had a tool, I think it was called REVIVE.EXE, that has brought floppies back from the dead for me. If you can track down an old copy of NU, give it a try. Run it on an older machine if possible (a 486 should be fine).

Dave Farquhar

http://dfarq.homeip.net

 

[bithead9]

I've doeen this a few times. This procedure has always worked for me. Get a 1.44 mb floppy and use a pencil to mark the HOLES in the 720K floppy. The use a small drill to drill opne the plastic in the 720K floppy. The newwer floppys CAN read the 720K as long as the HOLE is in the disk! Good luck!